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^a I ri Jt, 







WILDERNESS 

A JOURNAL OF QUIET ADVENTURE 
IN ALASKA 

BY 

ROCKWELL KENT 



WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR 
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY 

DOROTHY CANFIELD 




G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
tEbe ltnfci;erboclter ipres? 

1920 



/^v 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ROCKWELL KENT 

PLATES ENGRAVED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF WILLIAM G. WATT 



APh 19 ibl^U" •, 



THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, NEW YORK 



^ 



)CI,A5RGr)?7 







To 

old L, M. Olson and 

young Rockwell Kent 

of Fox Island 

this journal is 

respectfully dedicated 



The author acknowledges the courtesy of the owners of his 
drawings in permitting their reproduction in this book: 

MRS. ERNEST I. WHITE 
ROBERT NICHOLS 
STEPHEN C. CLARK 
MRS. PAYNE THOMPSON 
MRS. JOSEPH FLANNERY 
MRS. J. S. MORGAN, JR. 
DR. ARNOLD KLEBS 
HENRY S. CHURCHILL 
MRS. PERCY W. DARBYSHIRE 
MRS. MEREDITH HARE 
PAUL MANSHIP 
MRS. VALENTINE WINTERS 
HENRY NEWMAN 
HUNT DIEDERICH 
PURCELL JONES 
M.KNOEDLER AND COMPANY 
ALBERT STERNER 
MARIE STERNER 




INTRODUCTION 



^ AD jesting Pilate asked "What is Art?" he would 

ft,^^ have waited quite as many centuries for an answer as 
^m ^k he has for the answer to his question about Truth. 
# I V For art to the artist, and art to the rest of us, are two 
^^W M. very different things. Art to the artist is quite simply 
Life, his life, of which he has an amplitude and in- 
tensity unknown to us. What he does for us is to thrill us awake 
to the amplitude and intensity of all life, our own included. And 
this is a miracle for which we can never be thankful enough. 

This, at least, is what Rockwell Kent's Alaska drawings and 
Alaska journal do for me; they take me away from that tired 
absorption in things of little import which makes up most of our 
human life and make me see, not an unreal world of romantic 
illusion, that fool's pleasure given by the second-rate artist, but 
the real wonder-world in which I live and have always lived. 
They make me see suddenly that there is a vast deal more in the 

vli 



INTRODUCTION 

world than embittering and anxious preoccupations, that much of it 
is fine, much is comforting, much awe-inspiring, much profoundly 
tragic, and all of it makes up a whole so vast that no living organism 
need feel cramped. 

No other of the qualities of the journal and drawings goes home 
to me more than the unforced authenticity of the impression set 
down by this strong and ardent artist. Emerson's grandeur is in- 
finitely more convincing to me because of his homeliness, and I feel 
a perverse Yankee suspicion of those who deal in sublimities only. 
The man who can extract the whole quaint savor out of that 
magical, prosaic, humorous moment of human life, the first stretch- 
ing yawn of the early morning, that man can make me believe that 
I too see the north wind running mightily athwart the sky. And the 
artist who can put into the simplest drawing of a man and a little 
boy eating together at a rough table in a rough cabin, all the dear 
soUdity of family and home life, with its quiet triumph against over- 
powering Nature, that artist can make me bow my head before the 
sincerity of his impressive " Night." 

The homeliness of the diary, its courageously unaffected natural- 
ness, how it carries one out of fussy complications to a long breath 
of relief in the fewness and permanence of things that count ! And 
the humor of it . . . sometimes deliciously unintentional like the 
picture of the artist finishing a fine drawing, setting the beans to 
soak, bathing in the bread pan, and going to bed to read a chapter of 
Blake, sometimes intentional and shrewd like " a banana-peel on a 
mountain-top tames that wilderness," or "colds, like bad temper 
and loss of faith, are a malady of the city crowd " ; sometimes outright 
and hearty like a child's joke, as in the amusingly faithful portrait of 
the pot-bellied, self-important personality of the air-tight stove ! 

There are only three human characters in this quiet, intense 
record, all of them significant and vital. First of them is the artist 

viii 



INTRODUCTION 

himself, who in these notes, written originally for the eyes of his in- 
timates only, speaks out with a free unselfconsciousness as rare in 
our modern world as the virgin solitude of the island where he lived. 
Here is the artist at work, creating, as Henry James said he could 
not be shown; the artist, that is, a man violently alive, full-blooded 
and fine, fierce and pure, arrogant and tender, with an elate, boastful, 
well-founded certainty of his strength, rejoicing m his work, in his 
son, in his friend, in the whole visible world, and most of all in himself 
and his own vigorous possibilities for good, evil, and creative work. 

The other two human characters in this adventuring quest after 
great and simple things are acquisitions to be thankful for, also ; the 
touchingly tender-hearted, knight-like, beautiful, funny little boy; 
and lovable, dignified old Olson ... a fiction writer wonders in 
despair why old Olson so vividly, brilliantly lives in these unstudied 
pages, solid, breathing, warm, as miraculously different from all other 
human beings as any creature of flesh and blood who draws the 
mysterious breath of life beside you in the same room. 

Fox Island lives too; we walk about it, treading solidly, loving 
** every log and rotten stump, gnarled tree, every mound and path, 
the rocks and brooks, each a being in itself, " just as little Rockwell 
does; and we climb with the " two younger ones up the sheer, snow- 
covered ridge till across the great jagged teeth of Fenris-the-Wolf, 
we see the glory of the open sea." We " look up at Olson, swaying 
gigantic on the deck above us, as we bump the side in our little boat " 
and we go down into the warm cabin full of the fumes of cooking and 
good-fellowship, and drink with the old skipper and the old Swede till 
we too see deep "under the white hard surface of where life is 
hidden." 

All this firm earth gives authority and penetration to the shining 
beauty which pervades the book and the drawings, carries us along 
to share it, not merely to look at it; to feel it, not merely to admire it. 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

The notes here published were written, I believe, day by day for 
the author's wife and children, and are here published almost as 
they were set down, as commentary to the drawings. Well, let us be 
thankful that we were let into the family circle and along with them 
can spend six months in the midst of strength and beauty and tender- 
ness and fun and majesty, close to simple things, great because they 
are real. The author may be sure that we leave them with the same 
backward-looking wistfulness he feels, and with the same gratitude 
for having known them. 

Dorothy Canfield. 




PREFACE 

•''^L^L^^OST of this book was written on Fox Island in Alaska, 
y% ■ ■ a journal added to from day to day. It was not 
m m m m meant for publication but merely that we who were 
W^ W P living there that year might have always an unfailing 
memory of a wonderfully happy time. There's a ring of truth to all 
freshly written records of experience that, whatever their short- 
comings, makes them at least inviolable. Besides the journal, a 
few letters to friends have been drawn upon. All are given im- 
changed but for the flux of a new paragraph or chapter here and 
there to form a kind of narrative, the only possible literary ac- 
companiment to the drawings of that period herein published. The 
whole is a picture of quiet adventure in the wilderness, above all 
an adventure of the spirit. 

What one would look for in a story of the wild Northwest is 
lacking in these pages. To have been further from a settled town 
might have brought not more but less excitement. The wonder of 
the wilderness was its tranquillity. It seemed that there both men 
and the wild beasts pursued their own paths freely and, as if con- 
scious of the wide freedom of their world, molested one another not 
at all. It was the bitter philosophy of the old trapper who was our 
companion that of all animals Man was the most terrible; for if 

zi 



PREFACE 

the beasts fought and killed for some good cause Man slew for 
none. 

Deliberately I have begun this happy story far out in Resurrection 
Bay; — and again dropped its peaceful thread on the forlorn thresh- 
old of the town. We found Fox Island on Sunday, August 
twenty-fifth, 1918, and left there finally on the seventeenth of the 
following March. 

R. K. 

Arlington, Vermont, 
December, 1919. 



xu 



CONTENTS 



Introduction 
Preface 

Chapter 

I. — Discovery 
II. — Arrival . 
III.— Chores . 
IV.— Winter . 
V. — ^Waiting 
VI. — Exciu-sion 
VII.— Home . 
VIII.— Christmas 
IX.— New Year 
X.— Olson. 
XI.— Twilight 



Page 

vii 
xi 

I 

10 

41 

67 

84 

102 

109 

134 
150 
182 
200 



XIU 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 

*' Zarathustra Himself Led the Ugliest Man by the Hand, in 
Order to Show Him His Night- World and the Great Round 
Moon and the Silvery Waterfalls Nigh Unto His Cave" 

Unknown Waters 



Home Building . 

Fire Wood 

The Sleeper 

The Windlass 

The Snow Queen 

Fox Island, Resurrection Bay, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska 

Rain Torrents 

Day 

Night .... 

Wilderness 

One of Rockwell's Drawings 

Sunrise .... 

Adventure 

XV 



2 / 

6 *' 

12 

i6 

20 " 
24 ' 
28 
32 

36 

42 

46 

50 

54 
56 
60 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

















Facing Page 


On the Height 68 


The Day's Work 












. . 72 


Meal Time 












. 76 


Day's End . 












80 


The Cabin Window 












90 


"Go to Bed" . 












94 


Driftwood . 














• 98 


The Whittler 














. 104 


"GetUpl" 














no 


Man 














• "4 


Woman 














. 118 


Foreboding 














. 124 


Lone Man 














. 128 


Cain 














. 136 


Superman 














140 


The North Wind 












146 


Another of Rockwell's Drawings 










• 152 


Weltschmerz .... 










• 154 


Victory ..... 










. 158 


Zarathustra and His Playmates . 










164 


Frozen Fall .... 










. 168 


The Hermit 




, , 










• 172 



XVI 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Ecstasy 

Pelagic Reverie . 
Prison Bars 
Running Water 
Immanence 
The Vision 
The Imperishable 
The Star-Lighter 



Facing Page 

176 ' 

184 ,- 

188 ^ 

192 . 

196 / 

202 

206 

210 



XVll 




CHAPTER I 



DISCOVERY 



®E must have been rowing for an hour across that 
seeming mile-wide stretch of water. 
The air is so clear in the North that one new to 
it is lost in the crowding of great heights and spaces. 
Distant peaks had risen over the lower mountains of 
the shore astern. Steep spruce-clad slopes confronted us. All around 
was the wilderness, a no-man's-land of mountains or of cragged 
islands, and southward the wide, the limitless, Pacific Ocean. 

A calm, blue summer's day, — and on we rowed upon our search. 
Somewhere there must stand awaiting us, as we had pictured it, a 
little forgotten cabin, one that some prospector or fisherman had 
built; the cabin, the grove, the sheltered beach, the spring or stream 
of fresh, cold water, — we could have drawn it even to the view that it 
must overlook, the sea, and mountains, and the glorious West. We 
came to this new land, a boy and a man, entirely on a dreamer's 
search ; having had vision of a Northern Paradise, we came to find it. 
With less faith it might have seemed to us a hopeless thing 
exploring the unknown for what you've only dreamed was there. 
Doubt never crossed our minds. To sail uncharted waters and 

I 



WILDERNESS 

follow virgin shores — what a life for men! As the new coast 
unfolds itself the imagination leaps into full vision of the human 
drama that there is immanent. The grandeur of the ocean cliff is 
terrible with threat of shipwreck. To that high ledge the wave may 
lift you ; there, where that storm-dwarfed spruce has found a hold for 
half a century, you perhaps could cling. A hundred times a day you 
think of death or of escaping it by might and courage. Then at the 
first softening of the coast toward a cove or inlet you imagine all the 
mild beauties of a safe harbor, the quiet water and the beach to land 
upon, the house-site, a homestead of your own, cleared land, and 
pastures that look seaward. 

Now having crossed the bay thick wooded coast confronted us, 
and we worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that shore. 
But all at once there appeared as if from nowhere a little, motor- 
driven dory coming toward us. We hailed and drew together to 
converse. It was an old man alone. We told him frankly what we 
were and what we sought. 

" Come with me, " he cried heartily, " come and I show you the 
place to live. " And he pointed oceanward where, straight in the 
path of the sun stood the huge, dark, mountain mass of an island. 
Then, seizing upon our line, he towed us with him to the south. 

The gentle breeze came up. With prow high in the air we spanked 
the wavelets, and the glistening spray flew over us. On we went 
straight at the dazzling sun and we laughed to think that we were 
being carried we knew not where. And all the while the strange old 
man spoke never a word nor turned his head, driving us on as if he 
feared we might demand to be unloosed. At last his island towered 
above us. It was truly sheer-sided and immense, and for all we could 
discover harborless ; till in a moment rounding the great headland of 
its northern end the crescent arms of the harbor were about us, — 
and we were there 1 

2 




"ZARATHUSTRA fflMSELF LED THE UGLIEST MAN BY THE HAND, 
IN ORDER TO SHOW HIM HIS NIGHT-WORLD AND THE GREAT 
ROUND MOON AND THE SILVERY WATERFALLS NIGH UNTO 
HIS CAVE" 



DISCOVERY 

What a scene ! Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance 
and from the back of these the land dipped downwards like a ham- 
mock swung between them, its lowest point behind the center of the 
crescent. A clean and smooth, dark-pebbled beach went all around 
the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached 
bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above 
the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of 
the forest. So huge was the scale of all of this that for some time we 
looked in vain for any habitation, at last incredulously seeing what 
we had taken to be bowlders assume the form of cabins. 

The dories grounded and we leapt ashore, and followed up the 
beach onto the level ground seeing and wondering, with beating 
hearts, and crying all the time to ourselves: *' It isn't possible, it isn't 
real!" 

There was a green grass lawn beneath our feet extending on one 
side under an orchard of neatly pruned alders to the mountain's base, 
and on the other into the forest or along the shore. In the midst of the 
clearing stood the old man's cabin. He led us into it. One little 
room, neat and comfortable ; two windows south and west with the 
warm sun streaming through them; a stove, a table by the window 
with dishes piled neatly on it; some shelves of food and one of books 
and papers; a bunk with gaily striped blankets; boots, guns, tools, 
tobacco-boxes ; a ladder to the store-room in the loft. And the old 
man himself: a Swede, short, round and sturdy, head bald as though 
with a priestly tonsure, high cheek bones and broad face, full lips, a 
sensitive small chin, — and his little eyes sparkled with good humor. 

" Look, this is all mine, " he was saying; " you can live here with 
me — with me and Nanny, " — for by this time not only had the milk 
goat Nanny entered but a whole family of foolish-faced Angoras, 
father, mother, and child, nosing among us or overturning what they 
could in search of food. He took us to the fox corral a few yards from 

5 



WILDERNESS 

the house. There were the blues in its far corner eying us askance. 
We saw the old goat cabin built of logs and were told of a newer one, 
an unused one down the shore and deeper in the woods. 

" But come, " he said with pride, " I show you my location notice. 
I have done it all in the proper way and I will get my title from Wash- 
ington soon. I have staked fifty acres. It is all described in the 
notice I have posted ; and I would like to see anybody get that away 
from me. " 

By now we had reached the great spruce tree to whose trunk he 
had affixed a sort of roofed tablet or shrine to house the precious 
document. But, ah look ! the tablet was bare I only that from a small 
nail in it hung a torn shred of paper. 

'* Billy, Nanny! " roared the old man in irritation and mock rage; 
and he shook his fist at the foolish looking culprits who regarded us 
this time, wisely, from a distance. " And now come to the lake ! " 

We went down an avenue through the tall spruce trees. The sun 
flecked our path and fired here and there a flame-colored mushroom 
that blazed in the forest gloom. Right and left we saw deep vistas, 
and straight ahead a broad and sunlit space, a valley between hills ; 
there lay the lake. It was a real lake, broad and clean, of many acres 
in extent, and the whole mountain side lay mirrored in it with the 
purple zenith sky at our feet. Not a breath disturbed the surface, not 
a ripple broke along the pebbly beach ; it was dead silent here but for 
maybe the far off sound of surf, and without motion but that high 
aloft two eagles soared with steady wing searching the mountain tops. 
Ah, supreme moment! These are the times in life — when nothing 
happens — but in quietness the soul expands. 

Time pressed and we turned back. *' Show us that other cabin, 
we must go. " 

The old man took us by a short cut to the cabin he had spoken of. 
It stood in a darkly shadowed clearing, a log cabin of ample size with 

6 




UNKNOWN WATERS 



DISCOVERY 

a small doorway that you stooped to enter. Inside was dark but for 
a little opening to the west. There were the stalls for goats, coops for 
some Belgian hares he had once kept, a tin whirligig for squirrels 
hanging in the gable peak, and under foot a shaky floor covered with 
filth. 

But I knew what that cabin might become. I saw it once and said, 
" This is the place we'll live. " And then returning to our boat we 
shook hands on this great, quick finding of the thing we'd sought and, 
since we could not stay then as he begged us to, promised a speedy 
return with all our household goods. " Olson's my name, " he said, 
" I need you here. We'll make a go of it. " 

The south wind had risen and the white caps flew. We crossed the 
bay pulling lustily for very joy. Reaching the other shore we saw, 
too late, crossing the bay in search of us the small white sail of the 
party that had brought us part way from the town. So we turned and 
followed them until at last we met to their relief and the great satis- 
faction of our tired arms. 



^}^^^^. °il^°^^^^^t^. .^^'^^°^; ^^surrect ion Bay. Alaska . Lat. 55)°.54' N. LonH^-j^W 




CHAPTER II 
ARRIVAL 

OUR journal of Fox Island begins properly with the day of 
our final coming there, Wednesday, September the 
twenty-eighth, 1918. 
At nine o'clock in the morning of that day we slid 
our dory into the water from the beach at Seward, 
clamped our little patched-up three and one half horse-power 
Evenrude motor in the stem, and commenced our loading. 

Since the main part of such a story, as in all these following pages 
we shall have to tell, must consist in the detailing of the innumerable 
little commonplaces of our daily lives, we shall begin at once with a 
list, as far as we have record of it, of all we carried with us. It follows : 



I Yukon stove 

4 lengths stovepipe 

I broom 

I bread pan 

I wash basin 



I bean pot 
I mixing bowl 
Turpentine 
Linseed oil 
Nails, etc. 



10 



ARRIVAL 



10 gals, gasoline 
lo lbs. rice 

5 lbs. barley 

10 lbs. cornmeal 
10 lbs. rolled oats 
10 lbs. hominy 
10 lbs. farina 
10 lbs. sugar 
50 lbs. flour 
2 packages bran 

6 cans cocoa 
I lb. tea 

I case milk 
8 lbs. chocolate 
I gal. sirup 
I gal. cooking oil 

1 piece bacon 

2 cans dried eggs 

2 cans baked beans 
6 lemons 

2 packages pancake flour 
10 lbs. whole wheat flour 
6 ivory soap 

3 laundry soap 
6 agate cups 

4 agate plates 
4 agate bowls 
2 agate dishes 



4 pots 

2 pillows 

2 comforters 

I roll building paper 
I frying pan 

3 bread tins 

10 lbs. lima beans 
10 lbs. white beans 

5 lbs. Mexican beans 
10 lbs. spaghetti 

12 cans tomatoes 
100 lbs. potatoes 
10 lbs. dried peas 
5 lbs. salt 
I gal. peanut butter 

1 gal. marmalade 
Pepper 

Yeast 

5 lbs. prunes 
5 lbs. apricots 
5 lbs. carrots 
10 lbs. onions 

4 cans soup 
12 candles 

2 Dutch Cleanser 
Matches 

I tea kettle 
Pails, etc. 



Also there were a heavy trunk containing books, paints, etc., one 
duffel bag, one suit case, and a few other things. And when these 
were stowed away in the dory there was little room for ourselves. 
However, at ten o'clock we cast off and started for Fox Island with 
the little motor rurming beautifully. 

It lasted for three miles when at once, with a bang and a whir, the 
motor raced, and the boat stood motionless on the calm gray water. 
Through the fog we could just discern the cabin of a fisherman on the 
nearest point of shore — perhaps a mile distant. We rowed there as 

II 



WILDERNESS 

best we could, seated somehow atop our household goods; we un- 
loaded our useless motor, our gasoline, and our batteries, cleared a 
little space in the boat for ourselves to man the oars, and in a miser- 
able drizzling rain, pushed off for a long, long pull to the island. By 
too literal a following of directions I lengthened the remainder of the 
course to twelve miles, and that we rowed, I don't know how, in four 
hours and a half. Fortunately the water was as calm as could be. 
Rockwell was a revelation to me. With scarcely a rest he pulled at 
the heavy oars that at first he had hardly understood to manage ; and 
when we reached the island he was hilarious with good spirits. 

We unloaded with the help of Olson — whom by the way we must 
introduce at some length — and stowed our goods in his house and 
shed. We cooked our supper on his stove and slept that night and the 
next on his floor ; and then, having our own quarters by that time in 
passable shape, quit his friendly roof for the most hospitable, kindly, 
and altogether comfortable roof in the world — our own. 

Olson is about sixty-five years of age. He's a pioneer of Alaska 
and knows the country from one end to the other. He has prospected 
for gold on the Yukon, he was at Nome with the first rush there, he 
has trapped along a thousand miles of coast; and now, ever unsuccess- 
ful and still enterprising, he is the proprietor of two pairs of blue 
foxes — in corrals — and four goats. He's a kind-hearted, genial old 
man with a vast store of knowledge and true wisdom. 

The map shows our Fox Island estate. Our cabin was built as a 
shelter for Angora goats somewhat over a year ago. It is a roughly 
built log structure of about fourteen by seventeen feet, inside dimen- 
sions, and was quite dark but for the small door and a two by 
two feet opening on the western side. We went to work upon it the 
morning following our arrival and in two days, as has been told, made 
it a fit place to live in but by no means the luxurious home that it was 
in our mind to make. Our cabin to-day is the product of weeks' more 

12 




HOME BUILDING 



ARRIVAL 

labor. To describe it is to account for our time almost to the begimiing 
of the detailed days of this diary. 

Tread first upon a broad, plank doorstep the hatch of some ill- 
fated vessel — the sea's gift to us of a front veranda ; stoop your head 
to four feet six inches and, drawing the latchstring, enter. Before 
you at the south end of the sombre, log interior is a muUioned window 
willing to admit more light than can penetrate the forest beyond. 
Before it is a fixed work table littered with papers, pencils, paints, and 
brushes. On each long side of the cabin is a shelf the eaves' height, 
five feet from the floor. The right-hand one is packed with foods in 
sacks and tins and boxes, the left-hand shelf holds clothes and toys, 
paints and a flute, and at the far comer built to the floor in orthodox 
bookcase fashion, a library. 

We may glance at the books. There are : 

" Indian Essays ." Coomaraswamy 

" Griechische Vasen " 

" The Water Babies " 

" Robinson Crusoe " 

" The Prose Edda " 

" Anson's Voyages " 

" A Literary History of Ireland. " Douglas Hyde 

" The Iliad " 

" The Crock of Gold " 

" The Odyssey " 

Andersen's " Fairy Tales " 

" The Oxford Book of English Verse " 

" The Home Medical Library " 

Blake's " Poems " 

GUchrist's " Life of Blake " 

" The Tree Dwellers," " The Cave Dwellers," " The Sea People," etc. 

" Pacific Coast Tide Table " 

" Thus Spake Zarathustra " 

" The Book of the Ocean " 

" Albrecht Diirer " (A Short Biography) 

"WilhelmMeister" 

Nansen's " In Northern Mists " 

15 



WILDERNESS 

In the center of the right-hand wall is a small low window and 
beneath it the dining table. Right at the door where we stand, to 
our left, is the sheet-iron Yukon stove and behind it another food- 
laden shelf. A new floor of broad unplaned boards is under our feet, 
a wooden platform — it is a bed — stands in the left-hand comer by 
the stove. Clothes hang under the shelves; pots and pans upon the 
wall, snowshoes and saws ; a rack for plates in one place, a cupboard 
for potatoes and turnips behind the door — the cellar it may be called ; 
the trunk for a seat, boxes for chairs, one stool for style ; axes here 
and boots innumerable there, and we have, I think, all that the eye 
can take in of this adventurers' home ! 

Trees stood thick about our cabin when we first came there ; and 
between it and the shore a dense and continuous thicket of large 
alders and sapling spruces. Day by day we cleared the ground ; cutting 
avenues and vistas; then, though contented at first with these, en- 
larging them until they merged, and the sun began to shine about the 
cabin. It grew brighter then and drier, — nonsense 1 am I mistaking 
the daylight for the sun? I can remember but one or two fair days in 
all the three weeks of our first stay on the island. 

For a true record of this matter Olson's diary shall be copied 
into these pages. It follows in full with his own phonetic spelling 
as leaven. 



Sunday, Aug. 25th. — Wary fin Day. over tu Hump Bay got 2 salmon an 
artist cam ar to Day and going to seward efter his outfit and ar going to sta 
Hear this Winter in the new Cabbin. 

Wed. 28th. — Drisly rain and cold. Mr. Kint and is son arivd from seward 
this afternoon, goats out all night. 

Thurs. 29th. — goats cam ome — 12.30 p. m. Mr. Kint Working on the Cabbin 
fixing at up. Drisly rain all night and all day. 

Fri. 30th. — Wary fin day and the goats vant for the montane igan. Help 
putting Windoes i to the Cabbin. 

Sat. 31st. — Foggy day. Big steamer going to seward. 

16 




FIRE WOOD 



ARRIVAL 

September 

Sun. I St. — Mead a trip around the island. Cloudy Day. 

M. 2. — Big rainstorm from the S. E. goats all in the stabel. 

T. 3. — Drisly rain all Day. 

W. 4. — going to seward. 

T. 5. — Came Home 1 p.m. 

F. 6. — Drisly rain and Calm Wather. 

S. 7. — S. E. rainstorm. 

Sun. 8. — Big S. E. rainstorm. 

M.9.— 

T. 10.— " " " 

W. II.— first Colld night this fall. Clear Calm Day. 

T. 12. — Clowdy and Calm. Tug and Barg going West. 

F. 13. — Steamer from the Sought 5.30 p.m. Drisly rain and Calm. 

S. 14. — raining Wary Hard, the litly angora queen ar in Hit this morning. 
Fraet steamer from West going to Seward. 

Sun. 15. — raining Wary Hard all Day. the goats ar in the cabbin all Day 
sought Est storm. 

M. 16. — S.E. rainstorm. 

T. 17. — raining all Day. North Est storm With Caps and Wullys all over. 

W. 18. — Wary fear day. Mr. Kint and the Boy vant to seward this morning. 

T. 19. — raining heard all day steamer from West going to seward 4 p.m. 

F. 20. — raining heard all Day. 

S. 21. — Wary rof rainstorm from Soght Est. Wullys all over. 

Sun. 22. — Steamer from West going to Seward 2 p.m. the tied vary Hie Comes 
clear up in the gras and the surf ar Stiring up all the Driftwood along the shore, 
raining lik Hell. 

M. 23. — raining all Day. 

T. 24. — Snow on top of the mountins on the maenland a tre mastid skuner 
from West going to Seward, toed by som gassboth raining to Day egan. Mr. 
Kint and son got ome to the island this Evening. 

September fourteenth. 

I Stopped writing, for the fire had almost gone out and the cold 
wind blew in from two dozen great crevasses in the walls. The best 
of log cabins need recalking, I am told, once a year, and mine, 
roughly built as it is, needs it now in the worst way. Some openings 
are four or five inches wide by two feet long. We've gathered a great 

19 



WILDERNESS 

quantity of moss for calking, but it has rained so persistently that it 
cannot dry out to be fit for use. 

Well, it rains and rains and rains. Since beginning this journal 
we've had not one fair day, and since we've been here on the island, 
seventeen days, there has been only one rainless day. There has been 
but one cloudless sunrise. I awoke that day just at dawn and looking 
across out of the tiny square window that faces the water could see the 
blue — the deep blue — mountains and the rosy western sky behind 
them. At last the sun rose somewhere and tipped the peaks and the 
hanging glaciers, growing and growing till the shadows of other peaks 
were driven down into the sea and the many ranges stood full in the 
morning light. The twilight hours are so wonderfully long here as the 
sun creeps down the horizon. Just think! there'll be months this 
winter when we'll not see the sun from our cove — only see it touching 
the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange 
life without the dear, warm sun I 

I wonder if you can imagine what fun pioneering is. To be in a 
country where the fairest spot is yours for the wanting it, to cut and 
build your own home out of the land you stand upon, to plan and cre- 
ate clearings, parks, vistas, and make out of a wilderness an ordered 
place I Of course so much was done — nearly all — when I came. But 
in clearing up the woods and in improving my own stead I have had a 
taste of the great experience. Ah, it's a fine and wholesome life ! . . . 

Another day. The storm rages out of doors. To-day I stufifed the 
largest of the cracks in our wall with woolen socks, sweaters, and all 
manner of clothes. It's so warm and cozy here now I Olson has been 
in to see me for a long chat. I believe he can give one the material 
for a thrilling book of adventure. Take his story, or enough of the 
thousand wild incidents of it, give it its true setting — publishing a 
map of that part of the coast where his travels mostly lay — let it be 
frankly his story retold, above all true and savoring of this land — 

20 




THE SLEEPER 



ARRIVAL 

and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could surpass it. 
He's a keen philosopher and by his critical observations gives his 
discourse a fine dignity. On Olson's return to Idaho in the '8o's after 
his first trip to Alaska a friend of his, a saloon-keeper, came out into 
the street, seized him, and drew him into his place. " Sit down, Ol- 
son, " he said, ** and tell us about Alaska from beginning to end." 
And the traveler told his long wonder-story to the crowd. 

At last he finished. 

" Olson, " said his friend, " that would make the greatest book 
in the world — if it was only lies. " 

Gee, how the storm rages ! 

I'm relieved to-night; Rockwell, who seems to have a felon on 
his finger, is improving under the heroic treatment he submits to. 
I've had visions of operating on it myself — a deep incision to the bone 
being the method. It is no fun having such ailments to handle — 
unless you're of the type Olson seems to be who, if his eye troubled 
him seriously, would stick in his finger and pull the eye out, — and 
then doubtless fill the socket with tobacco juice. 

We have reached Wednesday, September the eighteenth. 

That day the sun did shine. We rowed to Seward, Rockwell and 
I ; stopped for the motor that on our last trip we had left by the way, 
but found the surf too high. At Seward the beach was strewn with 
damaged and demolished boats from a recent storm. Moreover, in 
the town the glacial stream was swollen to a torrent ; the barriers had, 
some of them, been swept away ; a bridge was gone, the railroad tracks 
were flooded, the hospital was surrounded and almost floated from 
its foundations. And we saw the next day, when it again poured 
rain, the black-robed sisters of charity, booted to the thighs, fleeing 
through the water to a safer place. It stormed incessantly for four 
days more. Although I had taken what seemed ample precaution 
for the safety of my dory, she was caught at the height of the storm 

23 



WILDERNESS 

by the exceptional tide of that season and carried against a stranded 
boat high up on the shore, and pinioned there by a heavy pile torn 
from the wharf. But our boat escaped undamaged. 

Seward was dull for Rockwell and me. We've not come this long 
way from our home for the life of a small town. America ofifers 
nothing to the tourist but the wonders of its natural scenery. All 
towns are of one mold or inspired, as it were, with one ideal. And 
I cannot see in considering the buildings of a single period in the East 
and in the West any indication of diversity of character, of ideals, of 
special tradition; any susceptibility to the influence of local condi- 
tions, nothing in any typical American house or town where I have 
been that does not say *' made in one mill." There's a God forsaken 
hideousness and commonplaceness about Alaskan architecture that 
almost amounts to character — but it is not quite bad enough to re- 
deem itself. Somewhere in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies 
there's a little town of one street backed up against the towering 
mountains. Dominating the town is the two- or three-story "Queen 
Hotel," the last word in flamboyant, gimcrack hideousness. Hotel 
and Moimtain ! it is sublime, that bald and crashing contrast. 

On September third, I wrote to a friend: "They strike me as 
needlessly timid about the sea here, continually talking of frightful 
currents and winds in a way that seems incredible to me and would, 
I think, to a New England fisherman. However, I must be cautious. 
Olson says that in the winter for weeks at a time it has been im- 
possible to make the trip to Seward. Well, I'll believe it when I try it 
and get stuck." 

Three weeks later, — Tuesday, September twenty-fourth, we were 
in Seward. The morning was calm varying between sun and rain, 
but it seemed a good day to return to Fox Island. Rockwell and I had 
some difficulty launching our boat down the long beach at low water; 
but at last we managed it, loaded our goods aboard, — viz., two large 

24 




THE WINDLASS 



ARRIVAL 

boxes of groceries, fifty-nine pounds turnips, a stove, five lengths of 
stovepipe, a box of wood panels, two hundred feet one inch by two 
inch strips, suit case, snowshoes, and a few odd parcels. 

At ten forty-five we pushed off. At just about that moment the 
sun retired for the day and a fine and persistent rain began to fall. 
After about three miles we were overtaken by a fisherman in a motor 
sloop bound to his camp three miles further down the shore. He took 
us in tow and, finally arriving at his camp, begged us to stay " for a 
cup of tea " — he was an Englishman. I yielded to the delay there 
against my own better judgment. After a hearty meal we left his 
cove at two fifteen. 

Still it drizzled rain and the breeze blew faintly from the northeast. 
We had a seven-mile row before us. Near Caines Head we encoun- 
tered squalls from the south and were for sometime in doubt as to 
the wind's true direction. We headed straight for Fox Island only 
to find the wind easterly, compelling us to head up into it. I for- 
tunately anticipated a heavier blow and determined to get as far to 
windward and as near the shelter of the lea shore as possible, and 
without any loss of time. Our propulsion toward the island I left to 
the tide which was about due to ebb. We made good headway for a 
little time until the wind bore upon us in heavy squalls. 

The aspect of the day had become ominous. Heavy clouds raced 
through the sky precipitating rain. The mountainous land appeared 
blue black, the sea a light but brilliant yellow green. Over the water 
the wind blew in furious squalls raising a surge of white caps and a 
dangerous chop. I was now rowing with all my strength, foreseeing 
clearly the possibility of disaster for us, scanning with concern the 
terrible leeward shore with its line of breakers and steep clififs. 
Rockwell, rowing always manfully, had great difiiculty in the rising 
sea and wind. Fortunately he realized only at rare moments the 
dangers of our situation. 

27 



WILDERNESS 

We were now rowing continually at right angles to our true course. 
I had but one hope, to get to windward before the rising sea and gale 
overpowered us and carried us onto the dreaded coast that offered 
absolutely no hope. Once to windward I had the choice of making a 
landing in some cove or continuing for Fox Island by running with the 
wind astern. At last the surface of the water was fairly seething 
under the advancing squalls; the spray was whipped into vapor and 
the caldron boiled. I bent my back to the oars and put every ounce 
of strength into holding my own with the gale. It was a terrible 
moment for I saw clearly the alternative of continuing and winning 
our fight. 

" Father," pipes up Rockwell from behind me at this tragic instant 
" when I wake up in the morning sometimes I pretend my toes are 
asleep, and I make my big toe sit up first because he's the father toe." 
At another time Rockwell, who had shown a little panic — a very little 
— said : '* You know I want to be a sailor so I'll learn not to be afraid." 

At last we turned and made for the island. We had reached the 
point where with good chances of success we coa/</ turn, — and where 
we had to. We reached the shelter of the island incredibly fast, it 
seemed, with the sea boiling in our wake, racing furiously as if to 
engulf us, — and then bearing us so smoothly and swiftly upon its 
crest that if it had not been so terrible it would have been the most 
soothing and delightful motion in the world. In rounding the head- 
land of our cove a last furious effort of the eluded storm careened us 
sailless as we were far on one side and carried us broadside toward 
the rocks. It was a minute before we could straighten our boat into 
the wind and pull away from the shore, then twenty feet away. Olson 
awaited us on the beach with tackle in readiness to haul our boat out 
of the surf. We landed in safety. Looking at my watch I found it to 
be a quarter to six. (The last four miles had taken us three hours !) 

Olson's dory had been hauled up onto the grass and tied down 

28 




THE SNOW QUEEN 



ARRIVAL 

securely. Mine was soon beside it. The tides and heavy seas of this 
time of year make every precaution necessary. 

The wind that night continued rising 'til it blew a gale. And that 
night in their bed Rockwell and his father put their arms tight about 
each other without telling why they did it. 

Wednesday, September twenty-fifth. 

It stormed from the northeast throughout the day. After putting 
the cabin in order and hanging out our bedding to dry by the stove^ 
for we had found it very damp — I set about cutting a large spruce tree 
whose high top shut out the light from our main windows. A few 
more still stand in the way. The removal of all of them should give 
us a fair amount of light even in the winter when the sun is hid. 
It occurs to me that it may be rather fortunate that my studio window 
looks to the south. I'll certainly not be troubled with sunlight while 
I may yet borrow some of the near-sun brilliancy from above our 
mountain's top. Rockwell and I worked some time with the cross- 
cut saw. I'm constantly surprised by his strength and stamina. Rock- 
well read nine pages in his book of the cave dwellers. So nine of 
"Robinson Crusoe" were due him after supper. He undresses and 
jumps into bed and cuddles close to me as I sit there beside him 
reading. And " Robinson Crusoe " is a story to grip his young fancy 
and make this very island a place for adventure. 

Thursday, September twenty-sixth. 

These are typical days, I begin to feel sure, of prevailing Alaska 
weather. It rains, not hard but almost constantly. Nothing is dry 
but the stove and the wall behind it ; the vegetation is saturated, the 
deep moss floor of the woods is full as a sponge can be. We took the 
moss that weeks ago we'd gathered and spread along the shore to 

31 



WILDERNESS 

dry and commenced with this sopping stuff the calking of our cabin. 
It went rapidly and the two gable ends are nearly done. What a 
difference it makes; to-night when my fire roared for the biscuit 
baking the heat was almost unbearable. The usual chores of wood 
and water ; a little work at manufacturing stationery ; supper of farina, 
com bread, peanut butter, and tea; six pages for Rockwell; and the 
day, but for this diary, is done. 

Friday, September twenty-seventh. 

At last it's fair after a clear moonlit night. I worked all day 
about the cabin calking it and almost finishing that job, splitting 
wood, and working with the cross-cut saw. Added stops to the frame 
of our door, made a miter box, and cut my long strips brought from 
Seward last trip into pieces for my stretcher frames. And Rockwell 
all this time helped cheerfully when he was called upon, played boat 
on the beach, hunted imaginary wild animals with his bow and arrow 
of stone-age design, and was as always so contented, so happy that 
the day was not half long enough. 

Ah, the evenings are beautiful here and the early mornings, 
when the days are fair ! No sudden springing of the sun into the sky 
and out again at night ; but so gradual, so circuitous a coming and a 
going that nearly the whole day is twilight and the quiet rose color of 
morning and evening seems almost to meet at noon. We glance 
through our tiny western window at sunrise and see beyond the bay 
the many ranges of mountains, from the somber ones at the water's 
edge to the distant glacier and snow-capped peaks, lit by the far-off 
sun with the loveliest light imaginable. 

To-night for supper a dish of Olson's goat's milk " Klabber " 
(phonetic spelling), simply sour milk with all its cream upon it, 
thick to a jelly. It was, in the favorite expression of Rockwell, 
" delicious." 

32 




FOX ISLAND, RESURRECTION BAY, KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA 



ARRIVAL 

Saturday, September twenty-eighth. 

Beginning fresh but overcast the day soon brought us rain, — and 
it is now raining gently as I write. And yet we accomplished a great 
deal, clearing of undergrowth a part of the woods between us and the 
shore, felling three more trees, and cutting up a monster tree with the 
cross-cut saw. At dinner time Olson ran in with the greatest excite- 
ment. On the path in the woods near the outlet of the lake he had 
seen at one time five otters. They came from the water and advanced 
to within twenty feet of where he and Nanny — the milk goat — stood. 
And there they played long enough for him to have taken a dozen 
pictures. In the afternoon we saw a nimiber of otters at another 
place, on the rocks at one end of the beach. They were in and out of 
the water, going at times for little excursion swims far out into the 
harbor, then chasing each other back and playing hide-and-go-seek 
among the rocks. This afternoon I prepared all my wood panels to 
begin my work, painting them on both sides. 

Sunday, September twenty-ninth. 

The Lord must have been pleased with us to-day for the grand 
clearing up we gave this place of His. Olson has begun to work to- 
ward me in clearing the still wild part of the intervening space be- 
tween our cabins. It begins to look parklike with trees stripped of 
limbs ten or twelve feet from the ground and the mossy floor beneath 
swept clean. With the cross-cut saw I finished up the giant tree we 
felled a few days ago ; and then, the groimd being clear, I cut the large 
tree that kept so much light from our windows. The difference it has 
made is wonderful ; our room is flooded with light. 

There is a fascination in cutting trees. Once I have gripped my 
axe, or even the tedious saw, I find it hard to relinquish it, returning 
to it again and again for one more cut. I believe that the clearing of 
homesteads gave the pioneer a compelling interest in life that was in 

35 



WILDERNESS 

wonderful contrast to the ordinary humdrum labor to which at first 
he must have been bred. It is easy to understand the rapid conquest 
of the wilderness ; begin it — and you cannot stop. 

Rockwell has set his heart upon trapping, in the kindest and most 
considerate way known, some wild thing — and having it for a pet. I 
rather discouraged his taming the sea urchin and persuaded him out 
of consideration for the intelligent creature's feelings to restore him 
to the salt water — and let me have back the bread pan. But now one 
of Olson's box traps is set for a magpie. They're plentiful here. I 
built myself a fine easel to-day, the best one I've ever had ; and put a 
shelf under my drawing table. The room is clean and neat to-night; 
it is in every way a congenial place. I don't see why people need 
better homes than this. It was cloudy most of to-day and rained a 
very little from time to time. Soon I can no longer keep from painting. 

Monday, September thirtieth. 

The morning brilliant, clear, and cold with the wind in the north. 
I promised Rockwell an excursion when we had cut six sections from 
a tree with the cross-cut saw. It went like the wind. Then with 
cheese, chocolate, and Swedish hard bread in my pocket for a lunch 
we started for the lowest ridge of the island that overlooks the east. 
We had always believed this to be a short and easy ascent until one 
day just before supper we tried it in a forced march and found, 
after the greatest exertions in climbing, that the ridge lay still the 
good part of an hour's climb above us. 

So to-day, though we chose our path more wisely, it proved hard 
climbing along rough stream beds, across innumerable fallen trees, 
through alder, bramble, and blueberry thickets, and always with the 
soft, oozy moss underfoot. But we reached the top — steep to the very 
edge. Suddenly the trees ended, the land ended, — falling sheer 
away four hundred feet below us; and we stood in wonder looking 

36 




RAIN TORRENTS 



ARRIVAL 

down and out over a smooth green floor of sea and a fairyland of 
mountains, peaks and gorges, and headlands that cast long purple 
shadows on the green water. Clouds wreathed the mountains, snow 
was on their tops, and in the clear atmosphere both the land and the 
sea were marvelous for the beauty of their infinite detail. Tiny white 
crested wavelets patterned the water's surface with the utmost pre- 
cision and regularity; and the land invited one to its smooth and 
mossy slopes, its dark enchanted forests, its still coves and sheltered 
valleys, its nobly proportioned peaks. It was a rare hour for us two. 

We then followed the ridge toward the south walking in the 
smoothly trodden paths of the porcupines. It led us up the lofty hill 
on the east side of the island between its two coves. But the steep- 
ness of the ascent and the matted thickets of storm-dwarfed alders 
that were in our way were too much, I thought, for Rockwell, and 
after going some distance farther alone I returned to him and we 
started homewards. 

Once on the moimtain side we sat down in the moss and mountain 
cranberry to rest. And all at once we saw a great old porcupine come 
clambering up the hill a short way from us. I spoke to him in his own 
whiny-moany language and he was much pleased ; he sat up, listened, 
and then came almost straight toward us. I continued talking to him 
until after several corrections of his course — determined upon by 
sitting up and listening — he arrived within four or five feet of Rock- 
well, and sat up again. 

We could hardly keep from laughing, he looked so foolish. But 
he sensed things to be wrong, dropped down, elevated his quills, 
then turned and started off. Somehow I couldn't let him go without 
annoying him; so, grabbing a stick I pursued him poking at him to 
collect a few quills. But at this Rockwell set up such a shrieking and 
wailing that I had to stop, — and finally apologized profusely and ex- 
plained that I meant no harm to the sweet creature. Rockwell madly 

39 



WILDERNESS 

loves wild animals, has not the slightest fear of them, and would really, 
I believe, try out his theory of calming the anger of a bear by kissing 
him. 

Then we came home and had a good dinner. I cut more wood and 
at last, after one month here on the island, I PAINTED. It was a 
stupid sketch, but no matter, I've begun! A weasel came out and 
looked at me as I worked, then whisked off. The magpies look into 
our trap, squint at the food, and then at once leave that neighborhood. 
It is cloudy and rainlike to-night. Is it too much to hope for more 
than one fair day? 



40 




^^^«^( 



CHAPTER III 
CHORES 

Tuesday, October first. 

1 0-DAY it rained ! We attended first to our fascinating 

_ chores, plying the cross-cut saw as the drizzle fell. 

M Then we went to work as artists, Rockwell with his 

^^^^ water colors and I with my oils. Rockwell has a 

number of good drawings of the country here and of 

the things that have thrilled him. 

Pop ! The cork of my jug of new made yeast has just struck the 
ceiling. That brew has been a part of this day's work. Hops, pota- 
toes, flour, sugar, raisins, and yeast; stewed and strained and bottled. 
To-day also was completed and served the first 



Fox Island Com Souffle 

" Take two cups of samp (whole hominy) and stew for an indefinite time 
in salted water (it should cook at least three or four hours). It should 

41 



WILDERNESS 

boil almost dry. Make of the remainder of the water and some milk two 
cups of cream sauce dissolving in it some cheese. Mix with the corn and 
pour into a baking dish. Spread cheese over the top and put into oven to 
brown. " 

We offer this delicious discovery to the world on the condition 
only that *' Fox Island Corn Souffle " shall be printed on the menu 
wherever it is used. 

I made to-day a grandfather's chair for myself. It is as comfort- 
able as it is beautiful. 

Every day I read in the '* History of Irish Literature. " The 
Deirdre Saga I read to-day. It must be one of the most beautiful and 
the most perfect stories in all the world. So little do we feel ourselves 
related, here in this place, to any one time or to any civilization that 
at a thought we and our world become whom and what we please. 
Rockwell has been a cave dweller hunting the primeval forest with 
a stone hatchet and a bow of alder strung with a root. To me it is the 
heroic age in Ireland. 

Wednesday, October second. 

Incessant, hard rain. The two artists at their work a good part 
of the day, Rockwell making several new drawings in his book of 
wonderful animals. We bathed and I washed the accumulated 
clothes of several weeks. And to-night Olson came for a long call. 
He's a good story teller and his experiences are without end. And so 
closes this day — with the rain still pouring monotonously on the roof. 

Thursday, October third. 

To-day was fair at sunrise, cloudy at nine o'clock, and showery 
all the rest. We worked again with the beloved cross-cut saw, 
setting ourselves an almost unattainable task — and then surpass- 

42 




DAY 



CHORES 

ing it. And I cleared the thicket for a better view of the mountain 
to the south ; and in the afternoon felled another large tree. Stretched 
canvass for a while; and painted and drew, and felt the goddess 
Inspiration returning to me. 

Olson, Rockwell, and I, with levers and blocks, turned aud 
emptied the three boats that the recent rains had almost filled. 
Already we fear the frost. The mountains have been capped with 
snow, all green has gone from their sides; the dark season is near 
at hand. 

Rockwell is ever sweet, industrious, and happy. He is beautiful 
after his bath. 



Friday, October fourth. 

A gloriously lovely day, a cloudless sky and the wind in the 
north. That puts life into men! Up at sunrise, we two. Before 
breakfast the axe was going, and afterwards we brought down two 
mighty trees. (The trees of this part of Alaska are not to be com- 
pared with the giants of the Western States. Two feet is a large 
diameter.) Then I painted for a while futilely, the green and wind 
blown sea, the pink mountains, snowy peaks, and golden morning 
sky. 

Rockwell and I couldn't restrain our spirits and had to clamber 
up the steep mountain side ; up, up we went straight above our clear- 
ings ; and soon, in looking back, the bay, the lake, and our neck of land 
lay like a map below us. Clififs and the steep slopes baffled us at times 
but we found a way at last to reach the peak of the spur above us. 
There it was like a pavilion, a round knoll carpeted with moss, a ring 
of slender, clean-trunked trees ; and beyond that nothing nearer than 
the sea nine hundred feet below. Coming down we ran across a 
porcupine toiling up the slope. We played with him a bit and finally 

45 



WILDERNESS 

let him climb a tree. Olson would have had us bring him home for 
dinner. They're said to taste good. 

We cut with the saw a while in the afternoon. Rockwell drew and 
I made two more sketches— one a good one. The evening at sim- 
down was more briUiant even than the day. For such days as this 
we have come to Alaska ! 

Saturday, October fifth. 

A hard day full of little bits of work. Sawed up a tree alone, — to 
punish Rockwell ! for not studying. Calking the east side of the cabin 
— the last side. Painted, baked, and built myself an arrangement 
out-of-doors to sketch in comfort. I sit on the board with my palette 
— a box end — secured before me and my picture above it. Rockwell 
took his punishment so to heart that in the afternoon he read ten 
pages in his book. All of to-day has been overcast, but with a clean, 
refreshing atmosphere. In the account of Anson's voyage around the 
Horn it is remarked that fair weather in those latitudes rarely lasts. 
It may be true of the same latitudes north. 

Monday, October seventh. 

Yesterday I wrote nothing in the diary — there was nothing to 
write, but that it rained. " Rain like Hell " Olson's journal doubtless 
reads, — and ditto for to-day. 

The storm is even harder now. The wind strikes our cabin first 
from the west, then north, east, and south. The surface of the cove 
is seething under the cross squalls; that is called the ** wullys. " A 
boat not strongly managed would be whipped round and rotmd. 
Olson has been much in to see us, lonely old man ! I drop my draw- 
ing while he is here and take to stretching canvass, all the while 
yarning with him. Rockwell likes the calls as a diversion. Rock- 

46 




NIGHT 



CHORES 

well's good humor and contentment is without limit. He draws with 
the deepest interest hours a day, reads for a time, and plays — talking 
to himself. 

We have good hearty fights together in which Rockwell attacks 
me with all his strength and I hit back with force in self-defense. 
We have a good time washing dishes, racing, — the washer, myself, 
to beat the dryer. Rockwell falls down onto the floor in the midst of 
the race in a fit of laughter. Rockwell's happiness is not complete 
imtil I spank him. I grab the struggling creature and throw hi m down, 
trying to hold both his hands and feet to have free play in beating 
him. This I do with some strength sometimes using a stick of kindling 
wood. The more it hurts the better Rockwell likes it — up to a limit 
that we never reach. 

So much for the day's play. Of our work mine is mostly 
over the drawing table. Both yesterday and to-day I made good 
drawings; and my ideas come crowding along fast. Cooking, 
somehow, is the least troublesome of all the daily chores. We 
live, as may be imagined, with a simplicity that would send a 
Hoover delegate flying from the door in dismay. This is our 
daily fare: 

BREAKFAST 

(invariably the same) 
Oatmeal 
Cocoa 
Bread and Peanut Butter 

DINNER 

Beans (one of several kinds and several ways) 

or 
Fox Island Corn Souffle 

49 



WILDERNESS 

or 
Spaghetti 

or 
Peas 

or 
Vegetable stew (barley, carrots, onions, potatoes) 

and 
Potatoes or rice 

and foften 
Prunes or apricots or apples i dried) 

SUPPER 

(invariably the same) 
Farina 

Corn bread with peanut butter or marmalade 
Tea for father, milk for son 

And sometimes dessert — stewed fruit, chocolate, or, when Olson 
gives it, goat milk junket. 

Let us here record that to this date we have had not the least little 
sickness, — only glowing health and good spirits. 

Tuesday, October eighth. 

RAIN 1 But what difference does it make to us. Everyone is in a 
good humor. The house is warm and dry; we've lots to eat and lots 
to do. 

Olson's dory was again half full of water so we turned her and the 
skiff over. I stretched canvass and primed it and finished Anson's 
'* Voyage Around the World "a thrilling book. Late this afternoon it 
began to clear ; the sun shone and we were presently at work with the 
saw — only to be driven in again by the shower. I expect fair weather 

to-morrow. But 

50 




WILDERNESS 



CHORES 

Wednesday, October ninth. 

Fair weather is still as far away as ever, unless a sharp but cloudy 
afternoon and sundown with brilliant light in the western sky spell 
change. Olson says the foxes will not eat to-night and that this is 
invariably a sign of change to good days — that in bad weather they 
eat and in fair they abstain. It poured in the morning and we worked 
indoors. After dinner we all moved a lumber pile that stood on the 
shore abreast of our cabin to a place nearer Olson's — this only to 
better our view of the water. We sawed wood for a while and piled 
all that we have so far cut ready for winter use. There are in all 
fifty sections of short stove wood. That is a month and a half's supply. 
I painted towards evening, and made two good sketches. 

The nights have grown colder. For the past two days the moun- 
tains across from us, the nearest ones, have been covered with snow 
downwards to half their height. The farther ranges have for weeks 
been white. They're beautiful and invite one to go climbing and 
sliding over their smooth white snowfields. Close to, one would 
find impassable crags and crevasses, a howling wind and bitter cold. 
Rockwell to-day finished his second book, " The Cave Dwellers. " 

Midnight Bulletin : the stars are out, brilliant in a cloudless sky ! 

Thursday, October tenth. 

It's raining ! All day has been overcast, but sharp and clear. It 
was for us all a day of hard work. We cleared up the woods between 
Olson's cabin and ours carrying one large pile of brush from our door 
yard to the beach and burning another huge one. That was a wild 
sight as night came. It had become a great fire of logs burning stead- 
ily and lighting up all the woods around. It is still burning in the 
pouring rain. We sawed a little — always more than keeping pace with 
our consumption of wood. Rockwell worked almost the whole day and 
went to bed tired. I read to him an hour. He loves to hear poetry. 

S3 



WILDERNESS 

We set an elaborate contrivance to catch a magpie; and were 
humiliated by the bird who walked round and round the snare eying 




ONE OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWmGS 



it wisely, then suddenly rushed in only far enough to secure a piece 
of decoy bait — and fled. Painted to-day making a good little sketch, 
but, on my first trial of the home-made canvas, finding it to need 
more priming. Work ! work ! 

Friday, October eleventh. 

This day we should have been in Seward. It was calm although 
it rained from time to time. Olson ofifered to tow us across to Caine's 
Head ; but, the rain coming up as we were about to start in the morn- 
ing, we waited till afternoon, started, proceeded half a mile, en- 
countered engine trouble, and finally ignominiously rowed home, I 
pulling Olson and his motor and Rockwell bringing in our own dory. 
If it had not been so late we would have kept on. 

54 



CHORES 

We have a magpie. I saw one hop into Olson's shed, quickly ran 
and closed the door, and there he was. Now he's in a box-trap cage 
set on a specially constructed shelf on our front gable. He's a garru- 
lous creature and bites angrily; but he's a youngster and we hope to 
teach him to say all sorts of pretty things; Olson says they take 
naturally to swearing. So Rockwell has at last a pet. 

If only it will hold calm! To-night it is fair and starlight — but 
we can never be sure of the weather's constancy. We hold every- 
thing in readiness to start in the morning. 

Saturday, October twelfth. 

A mild and lovely day on our island but in the bay a breeze from 
the north that would have made our rowing to Seward difficult. 
Still we wait with our things assembled for the trip. We shall go at 
the very first good chance. This morning Olson cleared the limbs 
from the trees about us to ten or twelve feet from the ground. Only 
the tall, clean trunks are now between us and our mountains across 
the bay. I painted most of the afternoon. My canvas is still quite 
impossible — rough and absorbent. We built a large cage for the 
magpie he was so restless in his small one. And now he's quite 
contented. 

Rockwell said to-day that he would like to live here always. 
That when he was grown he'd come here with his many children and 
me, if I was not dead, and stay. It is hard to write, it is hard to work, 
with the trip to Seward at hand. Olson says it is Sunday. I think 
he's right. Somehow I've missed a day. 

Sunday, October thirteenth. 

(I still keep to my chronology until we find out from Seward where 
we stand.) A wonderfully beautiful day with a raging northwest 

55 



WILDERNESS 

wind. I must sometime honor the northwest wind in a great picture 
as the embodiment of clean, strong, exuberant life, the joy of every 
young thing, bearing energy on its wings and the will to triumph. 
How I remember at Monhegan on such a day, when it seemed that 
every living thing must emerge from its house or its hole or its nest 
to breathe the clean air and exult in it; when men could stand on the 
hilltops and look far over the green sea and the distant land and 
delight in the infinite detail of the view, discerning distant ships 
at sea and remote blue islands, and, over the land, sparkling cities 
and such enchanting forests and pastures that the spirit leaped the 
intervening miles and with a new delight claimed the whole earth to 
the farthest mountains — and beyond ; on such a day there crept from 
his hole an artist, and, shading his squinting eyes with his hand, 
saluted the day with a groan. " How can one paint? " he said, " such 
sharpness ! Here is no mystery, no beauty. " And he crept back, this 
fog lover, to wait for earth's sick spell to return. 

This morning the magpie sang — or recited poetry ; he made strange 
glad noises in his throat — and that in a cage ! We worked, the rest 
of us, like mad. At five-thirty Olson, resting at last, said : " Well, 
you've done a great day's work. " And after that I painted a sketch, 
cut and trimmed three small spruce trees; and then, it being dark, 
prepared supper. 

But when do we go to Seward? My bag is packed. Olson begins 
each day by testing his motor. The wind must moderate in time. 
We see it pass our cove driving the water as in a mill-race. To-day 
it swept the cove itself. 

Rockwell went for a walk in the woods ; he has a delightful time 
on his rambles, discovering goats' wool on the bushes, following the 
paths of the porcupines to their holes, and to-day finding the porcu- 
pine himself. He always returns with some marvelous discovery or 
new enthusiasm over his explorations. He has been practicing writ- 

56 




SUNRISE 



CHORES 

ing to-day. He says that if he could only write he would put down 
the wonderful stories of his dreams. These stories would run into 
volumes. 

Tuesday, October fifteenth. 

Yesterday we left the island. The day was calm though cloudy, 
and at times it rained. Olson towed us to Caine's Head. From there 
we made good time Rockwell rowing like a seasoned oarsman, as 
indeed he has now a right to be called. We stopped at the camp 
where we had in August left our broken-down engine, and brought 
that away with us, as well as some turnips and half a dozen heads of 
beautiful lettuce grown on that spot. 

By night it was raining hard and blowing from the southeast. 
We spent the evening at the postmaster's house, playing, I, on the 
flute to Miss Postmaster's accompaniment. It went splendidly and 
imtil midnight we played Beethoven, Bach, Hayden, Gluck, Tchaikow- 
sky, till it seemed like old times at home. Then Rockwell with his 
eyes shut in sleep, consumed a piece of apricot pie and a glass of 
milk, and we came home bringing along two glasses of wild currant 
preserve. I read my letters over and then went to bed. But the 
storm raged by that time and I couldn't sleep for worry about my 
boat. At last I rose and dressed and went down to the shore. The 
dory was safely stranded but too low down. So with great toil I 
worked her higher up the beach beyond high water. 

To-day it has rained incessantly. I have bought a few odd sup- 
plies and registered for the draft. 

Above all to-day the engine has resumed its running and we'll 
return to Fox Island under power. I know nothing about an engine 
but I have eight miles to learn in before the only hazardous part of 
the voyage begins. To-night Rockwell and I spent the evening at the 
house of a yoimg man whom we've found congenial and who above 

59 



WILDERNESS 

all is a friend of a young German mechanic for whom I've a liking. 
So the four of us sang the evening through, seated before a great 
open fire. The house is of logs and stands out of the town on the 
border of the wilderness. There are spots like this little house and 
its hospitable hearth that show even the commercial desert of Seward 
to have its oases. And now we're in our room. Rockwell is asleep in 
bed. It is past midnight. I am thinking of dear friends at home, and 
I bid them affectionately good-night. 

Thursday, October seventeenth. 

Yesterday in Seward was about as every other day. We spent it 
between letter-writing in our hotel room and visiting from store to 
store. It poured rain and blew from the southeast. We spent our 
evening with the German. We have planned with him to signal back 
and forth from Seward, particularly to send me the news of peace. 
If I can distinguish, with glasses a high-powered electric light that he 
will show from a house on the highest point in the town, then, by 
means of the Morse code with which I am furnished and which he 
knows, I'll receive messages on appointed days. 

To-night Rockwell and I went a quarter of a mile down our beach 
to a point that commands a view up the bay to Seward and lighted a 
bonfire there. Boehm, the German, was regarding us, we presume, 
through a telescope. On Sunday night, if it is clear, we are to look 
for his light. The difficulty will be to distinguish it from others. 

We left Seward this morning at 9.45, our dory laden with about 
one thousand pounds of freight — including ourselves. The little 
three and one half horse-power motor worked splendidly and carried 
us to the island in a little over two and a quarter hours. The day was 
calm, to begin with, with a rising north wind as we crossed from 
Caine's Head. On the island we found a visitor. There had been two 
other men but they were gone to Seward the night before. All had 

60 




ADVENTURE 



CHORES 

been on Monday forced by the rough sea to turn back from attempt- 
ing to go around the westward cape. The old fellow who is still here 
told me to-night that in the twenty years that he had been in Alaska 
he had never seen such weather. That's good news. At Seward the 
mountains are covered with snow to within a few hundred feet of the 
town's level. I'm tired. This ends to-day. Incidentally my dates 
proved to be correct when I reached Seward. 

Oh, I've almost forgotten our loss. The poor magpie lay dead on 
the floor of his cage. So we found him, killed, I beUeve, by the storm, 
for Olson neglected to cover him. Rockwell, who straight on landing 
had run there, wept bitterly but finally found much consolation in 
giving him a very decent burial and marking the spot with a wooden 
cross. 

Friday, October eighteenth. 

The night is beautiful beyond thought. All the bay is flooded with 
moonlight and in that pale glow the snowy mountains appear whiter 
than snow itself. The full moon is aknost straight above us, and 
shining through the tree tops into our clearing makes the old stumps 
quite lovely with its quiet light. And the forest around is as black as 
the abyss. Although it is nearly ten o'clock Rockwell is still awake. 
It is his birthday — by our choice. His one present, a cheap child's 
edition of Wood's " Natural History," illustrated, has filled his head 
with dreams of his beloved wild animals. I began to-night to teach 
him to sing. We tried Brahms's "Wiegenlied," with little success, 
and then "Schlaf, Kmdlein, Schlaf," which went better. These 
songs and many other German songs, all with English words, are in 
the song book I bought him. I hope I shall have the patience and 
the time to succeed with Rockwell in this. 

Three men are now with Olson in his cabin, for the two who were 
gone to Seward returned to-day. They are younger men, one of them 

63 



WILDERNESS 

Emsweiler a well-known guide of this country. I spent an interesting 
hour with them this evening. Olson told me to-day that his age is 
seventy-one. The smell of fresh bread is in our cabin, for I baked 
to-day. Baking, wood-cutting, darning of socks, putting the cabin 
in order, and the building of a shelf, these, with the other usual chores, 
were the whole day's work; a profitless day lies on my conscience. 
I shall draw a little and then go to bed. 

Saturday, October nineteenth. 

To-day was raw and cloudy, mild and sunny ; in the morning windy, 
in the afternoon dead calm so that the hills were reflected in the bay. 
The men have left, I am glad to say, not that they were in themselves 
at all objectionable, but it somehow did violence to the quiet of this 
place to have others about. Emsweiler slaughtered one of the goats 
for Olson, so there's now one less of us here. I felled a large tree 
to-day and later sharpened the cross-cut saw preparatory to cutting it 
up. To-night the sun set in the utmost splendor and left in its wake 
blazing, fire-red clouds in a sky of luminous green. Not many more 
days shall we see the sun ; it sets now close to the southern headland 
of our cove. 

Rockwell works every day on his wild animal book. To obtain 
absolutely new and original names for his strange creatures he has 
devised an interesting method. With eyes closed he prints a name or 
rather a group of miscellaneous letters. Naturally the result he per- 
ceives on opening his eyes is astonishing. 

Sunday, October twentieth. 

It has been a beautiful, clear, cold, violent northwest day. I've 
painted on and ofif all day with wood cutting between. One can't 
stop going in such weather, and out-of-doors you can't stand still for 
it is too icy cold and windy. 

64 



CHORES 

Rockwell and I have just now, eight o'clock, returned from down 
the beach where we went to look for lights from Seward. But we 
could distinguish nothing meant for us. The moon has risen and 
illuminates the mountain tops — but we and all our cove are still in 
the deep shadow of the night. It is most dramatic ; the spruces about 
us deepen the shadow to black while above them the stone faces of 
the mountain glisten and the sky has the brightness of a kind of 




day. Olson brought us goat chops for dinner. We could not have told 
them from lamb. 

This afternoon late a small power boat appeared in the bay at- 
tempting to make its way toward Seward. After some progress the 
wind forced her steadily and swiftly back. When we last saw her 
she seemed to be trying to make the shelter of our island or one of the 
outer islands, the while driving steadily seaward. It's a wild night 
to be out in the bay though doubtless calm at sea. It is such an ad- 
venture that we must be on our guard against. As we look across the 
bay toward Bear Glacier, which is hidden by a point of land, we can 
see the efifect of the north wind sweeping down the glacier, a mist 

65 



WILDERNESS 

driving seaward. It is nothing less than the fine spray of that 
wind-swept water. 

Monday, October twenty-first. 

It is so late that I shall write only a little. To-day was again won- 
derful, a true golden and blue northwest day. I have painted and 
sawed wood, and built myself a splendid six-legged saw horse. Olson 
thinks I have already cut my winter's supply of wood — but it seems 
to me far from it. Rockwell has been most of the day at his own 
animal book, making some strange and beautiful birds. This morn- 
ing the ground was frozen with a hard crust. It did not thaw through- 
out the day, and again to-night it is very cold. Winter is at last upon 
us, the long, long winter. And the sun retreats day by day farther 
toward the mountain. I look to the sun's going with a kind of dread. 
We have seen nothing of the boat that last night was driven to shelter. 
We believe the men to be in the other cove of our island. 



66 




CHAPTER IV 



WINTER 



eNDLESSLY, day after day, the journal goes on record- 
ing a dreary monotony of rain and cloud. Who has 
ever dwelt so entirely alone that the most living things 
in all the universe about are wind and rain and snow? 
Where the elements dominate and control your life, 
where at getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day 
between you question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will 
of the mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, 
stand barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight 
trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God's 
will for one more whole, long day of life. " Ah God ! it rains again." 
And sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and 
rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at 
the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man 
or curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy- 

67 



WILDERNESS 

weather chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather 
garments. That is destiny. 

Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of 
weather with a battle cry, worked hard, — and then made up for out- 
door dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors, — dry, 
cozy warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do. 

We have reached late fall — for northern latitudes. The sky is 
brooding ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing 
in upon us. We're driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw 
the great drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them 
high. Calk tight with hemp the cabin's windward eaves so that no 
breath of wind can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the 
shelf. Set up the far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you 
warm, — warm feet in bed and a warm back while painting. Patch 
up the poor, storm-battered paper roof, — two or three holes we find 
and we are sure it leaks from twenty. About the cabin pile the hem- 
lock boughs, dense-leafed and warm, making a green slope almost 
to the eaves. Now it looks cozy ! Outside and in the last is done to 
make us ready for the winter's worst, and just in time! It is the 
evening of October twenty-second and the feathery snow has just 
begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in. " Well, well, " he cries, 
** how's this ! How does our winter suit you? " It suits us perfectly. 
The house is warm, Rockwell's in bed, and I am reading *' Treasure 
Island" to him. 

'* What are you going to make of him? " asked Olson that night 
speaking of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the 
pot for baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one : 

" ' Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief, 
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief. ' 

How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster's life ? " 

68 




ON THE HEIGHT 



WINTER 

Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence love- 
lier far than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a 
man could reach. A child could make a paradise of earth. 
Life is so simple! Unerringly he follows his desires making the 
greatest choices first, then onward into a narrowing pathway until 
the true goal is reached. How can one preach of beauty or teach 
another wisdom. These things are of an infinite nature, and in 
every one of us in just proportion. There is no priesthood of the 
truth. 

We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I, — the world of the books 
we read, — an always changing one, "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure 
Island," the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, "Water 
Babies, " and the glorious Celtic past, — Rockwell's own world of 
fancy, kingdom of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws, — 
and my created land of striding heroes and poor fate-bound 
men — real as I have painted them or to me nothing is, — and then all 
round about our common, daily, island-world, itself more wonderful 
than we have half a notion of. Is it to be believed that we are here 
alone, this boy and I, far north out on an island wilderness, seagirt 
on a terrific coast ! It's as we pictured it and wanted it a year and 
more ago, — yes, dreams come true. 

And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has 
begun. 

Short notes in the journal mark "Treasure Island's" swift 
passage. Then enter "Water Babies!" "Just after Rockwell's 
heart and mine," I have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his 
friends, — a warning to the snob in literature. How it did weary 
us and madden us, his English-gentry pride, — unless we outright 
laughed. "At last it's finished. That's an event. When Kingsley 
isn't showing off he's moralizing, and between his religious cant and 
his English snobbery he is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment, 

71 



WILDERNESS 

quite unendurable. So to-night we read from * Andersen's Fairy 
Tales ' — forever lovely and true." 

Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too 
little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love 
pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong, and 
fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action they 
like, the deed — not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga 
form is best of all, — life as it happens, neither right nor wrong, words 
that they can understand, things they can comprehend, interesting 
facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the child that 
half of "Robinson Crusoe" and three quarters of the smug family 
from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure adventure 
that is there. 

As for adventure, — that is relative. Where little happens and the 
gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow. 
You're stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world. 

The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal 
water of our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining 
bodies into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their 
gleaming, white patch under water, — there's a thrill ! 

The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in 
the bay, their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water 
with a sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, 
frantic, wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the 
thunder sound and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is 
beating on the sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. 
That was a drama for Fox Islanders. 

And later the poor magpie's death. Real tears were shed from a 
poor boy's half-broken heart. 

Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They're on 
the search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest. 

72 




THE DAY'S WORK 



WINTER 

There is mystery ! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moor- 
ings, or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she'd 
been stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on 
some island, drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know. 

A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build 
for him a cozy home — he doesn't like it much but still he should. 
We care for him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. 
Then at last one day when we'd pastured him in freedom out in the 
new fallen snow, trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut 
in and spoiled the trail and he was lost to us. 

Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! 
How many times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence 
Caine's Head is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily. 

The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that 
maddening beast, eats up one comer of our broom. I throw a heavy 
armful of kindling wood into his face — and he just sneezes. But 
Rockwell plays with the goats as if they're human, or rather, as if 
he were goat. They half believe it, he has told me, — and, Rockwell, 
so do I. 

Sunday, November third. 

To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest 
wind. The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond de- 
scription. I painted in- and out-of-doors continuously all the day ex- 
cept when Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have 
one's work on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming 
green sea and the fairy mountains. 

Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet. 
Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense 
and white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine's Head, the wash of a 
storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain for 

75 



WILDERNESS 

Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How 
many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how 
many score of times we peered through the httle panes of our west 
window never to find the thing we sought for. 

I've loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head 
and there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson ! This is 
November sixth, — nine days away ! 

" The war is over, " cried Olson as he landed. By all that's holy 
in life may the world have found through its mad war at least some 
fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a 
flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness. . . . 

Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen 
stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is asleep, 
the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors. . . . And now instead of 
bed I'll stir the fire and begin my work. 

Thursday, November seventh. 

A true winter's day with the snow deep on the ground and the 
profound and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be 
sensed even in this ever silent place. At earliest dayUght began a 
heavy thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. 
It occurred intermittently throughout the morning. ... I did the 
washing, using Olson's washboard and getting the clothes nearly 
white. 

Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who 
asked him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he repHed : 
" You damn fools, you don't understand an artist at all. Do you 
suppose Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and 
women hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone." 

" Well, what does he paint? " 

*' That's his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there 

76 




MEAL TIME 



WINTER 

on a picture, and next time I see it's been changed to a lake or some- 
thing else." 

One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most 
wants, his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take 
notice of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he 
brought us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward 
had rejoiced for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. 
I told Olson that the authorities might still come and remove me. He 
flared up, " I'd like to see them try it ! We could take to the moun- 
tains with guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing 
again. " And then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked 
for days and weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves 
and at last run them to earth, — one of his most thrilling and, I believe, 
absolutely true stories of his adventures. 

At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the 
echo from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden 
by the snowstorm. 

Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of 
his. It's a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer 
spelling. Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer 
and then, after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a 
chapter of the life of Blake. 

Friday, November eighth. 

It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been 
working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father — and it looks ever 
so fine. 

Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our 
cabin and blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking 
yield, — and then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread 
that a board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen 

. 79 



WILDERNESS 

with a crash and clatter, — and Rockwell sleeps on ! The wind does 
blow to-night, and it doesn't stop outside the walls of the cabin 
either. My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah ! the room is comfort- 
able and warm. 

This morning, it being at first wondrously fair, Rockwell and I set 
out for a boat ride. But what with the fussing of installing our motor 
and the launching of our cumbersome boat the wind was given time 
to rise and spoil the day for us. But we went out into the bay and 
played in the waves to see what the north wind could do. The chop 
was devilish, short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to 
another with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath, — and then 
running up onto a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak 
landing with a splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with 
water. In a calmer spot I stopped the engine and sketched our island ; 
after which we rowed home. The rest of the day we worked on the 
motor — first to find out why she wouldn't run, then, having found 
and fixed that, to put other parts in still better order, and then, by far 
the longest time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the 
course of our fixing we had broken. 

Rockwell's in bed, asleep, dreaming of the little, wild night- 
ingale that sang of freedom to that poor, unhappy Chinese Em- 
peror ; while far from here in streets and towns the tin nightingale 
of law-made liberty charms the world. And it's now my read- 
ing time, my time for bread and jam and a soft-cushioned 
back. 

The days run by, true winter days, snow, cold, and wind, — what 
wind ! It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts 
sweep upon us roaring as they come ; flying twigs and ice beat on the 
roof, the boards creak and groan under the wind's weight, the lamp 
flutters, moss is driven in and falls upon my work-table, the canvas 
over our bed flaps, — and then in a moment the wind is gone and the 

80 




DAY'S END 



WINTER 

world is still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far 
off forest roar. 

Olson is full of treats. His latest was in pleasant violation of the 
law. From a bottle of pale liquid half filled with raisins he poured 
me a drink, mixing it with an equal amount of ginger ale and a dash 
of sugar. It tasted pretty good, quite thrilling in fact. 

" What is it? " I asked. 

" Pure alcohol, " he said, smacking his lips. 

Olson then launched forth on confidential advice, " from one 
trapper to another, " on how to trap men,— in my case rich patrons. 
He has my need of them quite upon his mind. 

Olson's eggs, by the way, taste good enough. (They gave him 
in Seward twenty-four dozen bad eggs to bring out for the foxes.) 
We have eaten a dozen. To-day I cracked seventeen to find six for 
dinner. Onion omelette is the fashion to cook them in. Rockwell 
pronounces them delicious and — well — so do I. 

Hard, hard at work, little play, not too much sleep. The wind 
blows ceaselessly. Rockwell is forever good,— industrious, kind, and 
happy. He reads now quite freely from any book. Drawing has be- 
come a natural and regular occupation for him, almost a recreation — for 
he can draw in both a serious and a humorous vein. At this moment 
he's waiting in bed for some music and another Andersen fairy tale. 

Another day has gone and a new morning is hours on its way. 
Out in the moonlit night strained, tired eyes open wide and are made 
clear again, cramped knees must dance in the crisp air, the curved 
spine bends backward as the upstretched arms describe that superb 
embracing gesture of the good-night yawn. November the thirteenth ! 
how time sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon 
must cross again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin 
comer. I shiver and — go to bed. 

83 




CHAPTER V 



WAITING 



Thursday, November fourteenth. 

©E'RE ready to go to Seward the moment the weather 
moderates — which may be not for two weeks or 
two months. I've packed blankets and several 
days' food in a great knapsack so that if we're driven 
to land somewhere we'll not perish of hunger, ^d 
this trip while it may be carried out speedily may on the other hand 
strand us days without number in Seward and cost three or four 
times that many dollars. 

The wind is still in the North, the days are wonderfully beautiful, 
and the nights no less. This very night Rockwell and I skated for the 
third time, Ah, but it was glorious on the lake, the moon high above 
us in a cloudless sky, the snow and ice on the mountain sides glisten- 
ing and the spruces black. We skated together hand in hand like 
sweethearts ; going far to one end of the lake in the teeth of the wind 
and returning before it like full-rigged ships. And Rockwell whose 
second skate to-day this was improves every minute. 

84 



WAITING 

I've cut Rockwell's hair, four months' growth. He has had the 
appearance of a boy of the Middle Ages with his hair cut to a line 
above his eyes. Now he's truly a handsome fellow — and such a man 
under the hardships of this cold place and rough life that I'm very 
proud of him. 

Saturday, November sixteenth. 

Still it blows, yesterday and to-day, cold, clear, and blue, — and 
the moon these nights stands straight above us and stays till 
dawn, setting far in the north. It is really cold. Olson is quite 
miserable and wonders how we can keep at our wood cutting and 
skating. But I think I shall never live in such cold again as in 
that first winter on Monhegan in my unfinished house when on 
cold days the water pails four feet from the stove froze over be- 
tween the times I used them, and my beans at soak froze one 
night on the lighted stove. We love this weather here. While 
the cabin is drafty I pile on fuel remorselessly, and that's a real 
delight after having all my life had truly to count the pieces of 
coal and wood. The ice on the pond is six inches thick, part of it 
clear black that one can see the bottom through. This morning 
Rockwell changed to heavy underwear. He complains always of 
the heat, day and night. 

The days go on about as usual varied only by an occasional 
weekly or monthly chore and success or failure in my painting. 
This morning with Olson's help I brought my boat up onto the land 
above the beach. The boat is an extremely heavily built eighteen- 
foot dory with a heavy keel; and yet the wind carried it four feet 
last night and, if it had not been secured, might have blown it 
down into the water where the waves would soon have wrecked 
it. This night I shall not read in bed ; it's quite too far away from 
the stove. 

85 



WILDERNESS 

Sunday, November seventeenth. 

We jumped from bed in a hurry this morning believing that the 
apparent stillness boded a calm day and a fit one for the Seward trip. 
But the sea beyond our cove was running swiftly and within two 
hours there was a gale of wind and some snow. Cold it was and 
dark. We'd hardly put the lamp out after breakfast, before we 
lighted it again for late dinner. Still in that short daylight I painted 
and Rockwell skated and painted, and we both cut a lot of wood. 
I've spent the evening writing, trying an article for " The Modem 
School." We turned my boat over and secured it to the ground 
with ropes just in time to escape the fall of snow to-night that 
lies deep on the ground. The moon is up and through the clouds there 
comes a general illumination like daylight. 

Monday, November eighteenth. 

To-day a storm from the southeast. It blows like fury. Break- 
fast by lamplight, work until dark, then dinner — in the neighborhood 
of three o'clock or maybe four — more work, and a nap, for I felt ex- 
hausted. Rockwell goes to bed and is read to, I work a while longer, 
then a light supper for which Rockwell gets up again, then — the 
dishes washed and R. again in bed — a call on Olson for three quarters 
of an hour, leaving there at ten, to work again till some wild hour. 
What a strangely arranged day! I'm determined to have a clock. 
But now it will be seen that no more time must be spent this night 
upon this diary. Amen. 

Tuesday, November nineteenth. 

A dreary, dreary, a weary day. But I've worked or somehow been 
ceaselessly busy and now I'm about ready for my nightcap of reading 
and bed. Four canvases stretched and primed stand to my credit 
and that alone is one day's work in effort and conquered repugnance. 

86 



I WAVr TO pE*/) O^E M'lCflT, Ati^ 

FATHER SAT UP /IM) '■«'^ *^ ^^ 

MCAH. 1 ANJMX f/\Tm ^^^"^ W^NT- 

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RE WILDCATS'. ^iL DPI ill J/"Vc ^^ 

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3fff WOODS Aivp llt^ VVo^Am A VEav i^**^KL 

ofL A 609H K^AKtw? ^/^K (?LlOs/>t)N TI^/?tF 
IT W4^ / KKU 0? THB 7A&E WHILE 

tftU /y/M Nor To SftoOT Ht& 6-51^ ^- 
^ft^ I WON/T TO KA(H H\M. wmtE 

tAfAT /HOWr^J-^FMCf Toff/M. f '^^. 
>L^v5 cFp OF r/i/$^ iRae, ANt> 

I MA P£ ^ ^^^<^ 5^^^ ^^ ^^'^^^' ' 




ROCKWELL'S DREAM 



WAITING 

What a tedious work. My Christmas letters are written, nearly all 
of them. And as Christmas draws near it seems more and more 
impossible without home and the children. It will be a huge make- 
believe for one of our family here ! 

There's a big storm at sea from the look of the water and the sound 
of the wind. And the rain falls drearily and on the roof it rattles. 
From the tall trees the great drops fall like stones ; they beat to pieces, 
little by little, the paper roof, and now when the rain is hardest we 
hear the drip, drip of the water on the floor. But we are comfortable — 
so what of it all. 

I read *' Big Claus and Little Claus " to Rockwell to-night. That's 
a great story and we roared over it. Rockwell doesn't like the stories 
about kings and queens, he says, " They're always marrying and that 
kind of stuff." Just the same Rockwell himself has his life and 
marriage pretty closely planned, — the journey from the East alone, 
the wife to be found at Seattle to save her carfare — and yet not put 
off as far as Alaska, for there they don't look nice enough, — and then 
life in Alaska to the end of his days. And I'm to be along if I'm not 
dead, — as I probably shall be, he says. 

I have just finished the life of Blake and am now reading Blake's 
prose catalogue, etc., and a book of Indian essays of Coomeraswamy. 
The intense and illuminating fervor of Blake ! I have just read this : 
" The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. 
To suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that 
are now in the world is not knowing what Art is ; it is being blind to 
the gifts of the Spirit." Here in the supreme simpUcity of life amid 
these mountains the spirit laughs at man's concern with the form of 
Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man's 
own poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself 
he must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to 
be material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind. 

89 



WILDERNESS 

Wednesday, November twentieth. 

To-morrow we hope to get oflF — although it still storms. There's a 
terrific sea rumiing but even such a sea would trouble us less than the 
chop of the north wind. The wind above all else is to be feared here. 

I painted little — it was so dark. Somehow on these short days it 
is diflBcult to accomplish much. Certain things have to be done by 
daylight: the chopping of wood, carrying of water from a hundred 
yards away, lamp filling, and some cooking. I made myself a lot of 
envelopes to-day and second-coated the canvases of yesterday's 
stretching. And now it is bedtime for to-morrow we rise early. 
Oh! the porcupine returned to-day and was discovered feeding 
calmly near the cabin. He showed no alarm at Rockwell's approach, 
and, when finally after some hours of undisturbed nibbling and 
napping Rockwell carried him home by his tail and set him down a 
little distance from his old cage, he ran straight there and interned 
himself. 

Friday, November twenty-second. 

Both yesterday and to-day are to be recorded. The porcupine 
is dead ! And yesterday he endeared himself so to us, playing about 
in the house with the utmost content. The cause of his death we 
cannot know — unless it was our kindness. Rockwell with Olson's 
leather mittens on did carry him about a good deal. Of course they 
are creatures nocturnal and we had planned to let him have his regu- 
lar hours for exercise and feeding, Rockwell delighting in the plan 
that he should stay with him in the woods at night, which I was cer- 
tainly going to let him try. But it's over, — and Pet No. 2 has gone to 
his happy hunting grounds. 

It storms, yesterday violently with such wind and rain as seemed 
incredible. The thin paper roof made the noise deafening so that I 
could not sleep ; and the surf beat and the forest roared ; it was a wild 

90 




THE CABIN WINDOW 



WAITING 

night. To-day is better though it pours every half hour. When, 
when shall we get to Seward ! And here before me are displayed all 
the pretty Christmas presents I have made and that Rockwell has 
made. Here we sit, these dark short days, working together at the 
same table just like two professional craftsmen. On these days I 
cannot paint, — and Olson calls upon us more than he should. Still, 
we let him sit here in silence and he is wise enough to be quite con- 
tent. Now it is late. The stove is out and I must go to bed. Two 
meals only to-day, — another is due me. Oh 1 1 made myself a beauti- 
ful die for note paper yesterday and printed it on my envelopes 
to-day. 

Saturday, November twenty-third. 

It dawned calm with rain hanging in the air. We hurried with our 
breakfast in the hope that we should get off; but within an hour 
at the turn of the tide the northwest wind whipped down from the 
moimtains and the rain fell in torrents. And now at a late hour of the 
night it still rains although the wind has fallen. We felled a tree to- 
day and partly cut it up. Although it was dismally dark all the time 
I managed to paint a little. And I wrote much and drew in black and 
white. Rockwell has been industrious as usual, drawing at my side. 
He told me an amusing anecdote of little Kathleen that is worthy to 
go down here. When in play she wants to change her doll's name 
she sends for the pretend doctor, again herself, and he operates on 
the doll. Cutting a hole in her stomach he stuffs into it a little piece 
of paper on which he has written the new name. And so the name is 
changed. 

Tried some cottonseed oil of Olson's to-day that was too bad. 
A year or two ago he was given a case of spoiled mayonnaise dressing 
for fox food. Olson saved the oil which had separated from the rest 
of it. I made dough for doughnuts while I heated the oil to fry our- 

93 



WILDERNESS 

selves that great treat. Then arose a pinching, rancid odor that 
ahnost made me ill but which Rockwell called delicious. However I 
baked the doughnuts. Still, the oil unheated seemed not bad. 

Sunday, November twenty-fourth. 

Olson declares this day to be Simday and in honor of the day he 
gave me a cup of milk for junket. And in honor of the day, whatever 
it is, I worked so hard that now I'm tired out. The day began with 
snow and continued with it. It blustered and blew much as a day in 
March and the bay looked wild. And now to-night it is clear and 
starlight. Will the north wind begin to blow again to-morrow? The 
chances are that it will and Seward and the sending of my mail will 
be as far away as ever. I painted with some success for the snow 
makes the cabin lighter. Really my picture looks well. Eight 
canvases are far along so that I'm proud of them. We cut wood to- 
day of course; it would be great fun if only we'd more minutes of 
daylight to spare. Steamer must be due in Seward now. We've seen 
none for two weeks or longer. 

Monday, November twenty-fifth. 

It rages from the northeast ! The bay is a wild expanse of breakers. 
They bear into our cove and thunder on the beach. A mad day and a 
wild night. And Seward is as far off as ever ! It is now my hope that 
a steamer will go to Seward before me. Olson finds by his diary that 
none has been seen to go there for two weeks. I began two new 
pictures to-day trying for the first time to paint after dark. My lamp 
is so inadequate in this dark interior — it bums only a three-quarter 
inch wick — that I can work only in black and white. But I've 
laid in the whole picture in that way. Rockwell spends several hours 
a day out-of-doors exploring the woods, searching out porcupine trails 
and caves. It is weeks since I have stopped my work even for a walk. 

94 




GO TO BED 



WAITING 

In this " out-of-doors life " I see little of out-of-doors. It's a blessing 
to me to have to saw wood every day. 

I finished Coomeraswamy's "Indian Essays" to-day, an illuminat- 
ing and inspiring book. Coomeraswamy defines mysticism as a belief 
in the unity of life. The creed of an artist concerns us only when we 
mean by it the tendency of his spirit. (How hard it is to speak of these 
intangible things and not use words loosely and without exact mean- 
ing.) I think that whatever of the mystic is in a man is essentially 
inseparable from him ; it is his by the grace of God. After all, the quali- 
ties by which all of us become known are those of which we are our- 
selves least conscious. The best of me is what is quite impulsive ; and, 
looking at myself for a moment with a critic's eye, the forms that occur 
in my art, the gestures, the spirit of the whole of it is in fact nothing 
but an exact pictorial record of my unconscious living idealism. 

Tuesday, November twenty-sixth. 
After a terribly stormy and cold night the day was fair with the wind 
comfortably settled in the north as if he meant to stay there. Only 
at night has it been cahn. To-night again is so and if I had not Rock- 
well on my hands to make me timid I'd go at night to Seward. Olson 
was a real Santa Claus to-day. First he gave us Schmier Kase, then a 
good salt salmon — two years old which he said we'd " better try " — 
and to-night a lot of butter churned by him from goat's milk. It looks 
like good butter and, with the added coloring matter, more palatable 
than the natural white butter of the goat. We felled two trees to-day 
— fairly small ones. We consume a vast amoimt of wood with our all- 
night fire. Well — to-morrow, let us say again, we'll be off to Seward. 

Wednesday, November twenty-seventh. 
To-day, if we had known how the weather would turn, we should 
have started. It was lovely, cold but fair with the wind in the south- 

97 



WILDERNESS 

west. It had in the morning all appearances of a heavy blow and we 
failed to get in shape to take advantage of its calming as the afternoon 
advanced. At any rate I have a little picture of it with the soft haze of 
the day and the loose clouds. I painted besides on the large canvas of 
Superman begxm a few days ago. Olson lent me his *' grub-box " to 
use, a wooden box of small grocery size with a cover fastened with a 
strap and buckle. Such a box is part of the outfit of every man on the 
Yukon. My emergency grub is now in it, my letters, Christmas 
presents, and all that's bound for Seward. Rockwell took Squirlie out 
for an airing to-day, wrapping him with tender care in a sweater. 
They went for a long way into the woods like good companions. Then 
Rockwell drew a portrait of his muflBed pet which is destined for 
Clara's Christmas. 

Thursday, November twenty-eighth. 

This continual waiting is getting upon my nerves. Most of to-day 
I spent tinkering with the engine. It goes now — in a water barrel. 
The trouble with the best of these little motors is that the moment 
they get wet they stop, and they are attached at such an exposed place, 
on the stern, that they will get wet if there's much of a sea. Then 
you're in a bad fix for it's impossible to make any headway rowing 
with the engine — or rather the propeller — dragging. Most of the 
engines are hung right on the stem and can be readily detached and 
drawn into the boat. But mine fits into a sort of pocket built in the 
stem and is diflicult even on land to Hft out. It weighs decidedly over 
a hundred pounds. So I don't reUsh getting caught with such an 
equipment. I must have mentioned, by the way, that the engine was 
'* thrown in " with the boat as of no value. 

So there's the day gone. To-night we go to bed early and 
if it is calm just before daylight in the morning we shall start 
at once. 

98 




DRIFTWOOD 



WAITING 

Friday, November twenty-ninth. 

Last night a terrific storm from the east. A few blasts struck the 
house with such force that it seemed our thin roof could not stand it. 
Of course it is really quite strong enough but the noise of those sudden 
squalls bearing along snow and ice from the tree tops is simply ap- 
palling. In the morning it became milder but continued to rain and 
snow and for most of the day to blow heavily from the eastward. In 
the afternoon to my despair a steamer entered for Seward; she'll 
doubtless leave at daylight. There goes one of my chances to get my 
Christmas mail off. 

I painted splendidly to-day and am in the seventh heaven over it, 
— which takes away some of my gloom at never reaching Seward. 
A long call from Olson to-night. He sits here patiently and silently 
while I draw. It snows steadily. What will to-morrow bring? 

Francis Galton, the inquirer into human faculty, would have been 
charmed at Rockwell's casual mention of the colors of proper names. 
They do apparently assume definite colors that seem to him appro- 
priate and characteristic beyond question. Clara, too, sees names as 
colors. Father is blue, Mother is a darker blue. The breadth of 
vowel soimd apparently, judging from this and other examples he 
gave me, lowers the tone of color. Kathleen is a light yellow, very 
light. Now for a bite to eat, for I've had but two meals— and then to 
bed. 



lOI 




CHAPTER VI 



EXCURSION 



Thursday, December fifth. 

y^k^ OVEMBER thirtieth we arose before daylight. It was 

yK^^ a mild, still morning and the melting snow dripped 

£ M m from the trees. Without breakfast we set about at 

^^^ M' once to carry our things over to the boat. Olson was 

aroused and turned out to help. There's always much 

to be carried on a trip to Seward ; gasoline, oil, tools, my pack bag — 

containing clothes, heavy blankets, and spare boots, — and the grub 

box Olson had given me packed with mail, books, grub, and the flute. 

The engine was in good order and started promptly. So away we 

went out over the bay just as the day brightened. 

It was calm and beautiful. The sun from below the horizon shot 
shafts of light up into the clouds, gray became pink, and pink grew 
into gold until at last after an hour or more the sun's rays lighted up 
the mountain peaks, and we knew that he had risen. It continued 
cahn and mild all the way, but nevertheless I caught myself singing 

102 



EXCURSION 

"Erlkonig," such is my anxiety at carrying Rockwell with me. 
Rockwell enjoyed the trip wrapped up in a sheepskin coat of Olson's. 
We stopped at a fishing camp for a moment's chat from the water. The 
man living there had just caught a good sized-wolverine. We declined 
breakfast and hurried on. 

In Seward we stored our things in Olson's cabin, a little place 
about eight feet square, and started for the hotel. One of our friends 
met us with a shout, ** Well, you've had good sense to stay away so 
long. " 

Influenza, I then learned, had raged in Seward, there having been 
over 350 cases ; and smallpox had made a start. But the deaths had 
been few and it was now well in hand. However, I shunned the hotel. 
A little cottage was generously put at our disposal and we were soon 
comfortably settled there with our mail from home spread before us. 
I left everything of mine at the hotel untouched and we continued to 
wear our old clothes throughout the stay. At midnight I went with 
Otto Boehm to pull the dory up above the tide and overturn her, and 
then continued letter writing until three-thirty A.M. 

December first and every day of our stay at Seward was calm and 
fair. We kept house in our cottage, I continually busy writing and 
doing up Christmas presents, for a steamer had entered on the thir- 
tieth and was due to leave Sunday night, the first. The people of 
Seward are friendly without being the slightest bit inquisitive, 
and they are extremely broad-minded for all that their coimtry 
is remote from the greater world. I don't believe that provincial- 
ism is an inevitable evil of far-off communities. The Alaskan 
is alert, enterprising, adventurous. Men stand on their own feet 
— and why not? The confusing intricacy of modem society is 
here lacking. The men's own hands take the pure gold from the 
rocks; no one is another's master. It's a great land — the best 
by far I have ever known. 

103 



WILDERNESS 

What a telltale of reaction from our lonely island life is this 
roseate vision of the little city of the far northwest! We came in 
time to see Seward quite differently and, with confidence in Alaska, 
to believe it to be in no way a typical and true Alaskan town. The 
" New York of the Pacific," as it is gloriously acclaimed in the litera- 
ture of its Chamber of Commerce, numbers its citizens perhaps at 
half a thousand — the tenacious remnant of the many more who 
years ago trusted our government to fulfill its promises to really build 
and operate a railroad into the interior. One's indignation fires at 
the recital of the men of Seward's wrongs, — until you recollect that 
Seward was built for speculation, not for industry, and that by the 
chance turn of the wheel many have merely reaped loss instead of 
profit. There are no resources at that spot to be developed and there 
is consequently no industry. 

Seward is planned for growth and equipped for commerce. Wide 
avenues and numbered blocks adorn the town-site maps where to the 
naked eye the land's a wilderness of stumps and briars. The center 
of the built-up portion of the town, one street of two blocks' length, is 
modern with electric lights and concrete pavements. The stores are 
wonderfully good; there are two banks and several small hotels, a 
baker from Ward's bakery in New York and a French barber from 
the Hotel Buckingham. There's a good grammar school, a hospital, 
and churches of all sorts. There is no public library; apparently one 
isn't badly missed. Seward's a tradesmen's town and tradesmen's 
views prevail, — narrow reactionary thought on modem issues and a 
trembling concern at the menace of organized labor. A strike of the 
three newsboys of the Seward paper plunged the poor fool its printer 
into frantic fear of an I. W. W. plot. But even Seward smiled at the 
little man's terror. The worst of Seward is itself; the best is the 
strong men that by chance are there or that pass through from 
the great Alaska. 

104 




THE WHITTLER 



EXCURSION 

December second was a day for shopping. I bought all manner of 
Christmas things, things for the tree, things to eat, little presents for 
Olson — but nothing for Rockwell. He and I must do without presents 
this Christmas. Then more letters were written. A wood block that 
I had cut proved, on my seeing a proof of it, to be absolutely worthless. 

December third I had still so much mail and business to attend to 
that I stayed over another day. Set a door frame for Brownell and 
spent that evening at his house. The postmaster came too, fine 
fellow, and we'd a great evening taking turns singing songs — and the 
P. M. did mighty well with " School-master Mishter O'Toole. " The 
day I'd spent writing and gossiping about town. 

I heard then a story about Olson that's worth while. He was once 
telling a crowd of men about the reindeer to the northward. Among 
his listeners was a Jew who was annoyed with his ** hectoring. " 
At last this joker asked: " Olson, if you bred a reindeer to a Swede 
what would you get? " " You'd get a Jew, " replied Olson. The Jew, 
who still lives in Seward, has not bothered Olson since. The old man 
has a rare reputation for his honesty and truth and all roimd sterling 
qualities. 

It's truly a satisfaction to be in a country where men are alert 
enough to take no offense at alertness, where enterprise is so common 
a virtue that it arouses no suspicion, and where it is the rule to mind 
your own business. 

December fourth we set about to leave for Fox Island. It took 
two hours to wind up our final business in town and embark. Brown- 
ell helped with the boat. Of cotirse the engine balked for fifteen 
minutes and then (not " of course ") went beautifully. After travel- 
ing a quarter of a mile I learned that Rockwell had left our clock 
standing in the snow by Olson's cabin. So for that we went back. 
Brownell saw us and brought it. 

The trip was swift and smooth. At Caine's Head it began to snow, 

107 



WILDERNESS 

obscuring Fox Island, but I knew the course. In mid-channel the 
engine stopped. After ten minutes' tinkering it resumed going and 
went beautifully till we rotmded the head of our cove. Then it sput- 
tered and I had continually to crank it. However, it carried us to 
thirty or forty feet of the shore when it breathed its last, thanks to 
the snow that had by now thoroughly wet the engine and ourselves. 
We unloaded and with great labor hauled up the dory and turned her 
over. That night I was exhausted and went straight to bed, leaving 
Rockwell at his drawing. So now we're on Fox Island again. 



1 08 




CHAPTER VII 



HOME 



Thursday, December fifth (Continued). 

^ ILD. rainy, snowy, sleepy — this first day back at home. 

J^T^B ^ I've done little work and dared look at but one 
^V ■ I picture — that of Superman — and it appears truly mag- 
WW m m nificent. The sky of it is luminous as with north- 
^^ em lights, and the figure lives. After all it is Life 

which man sees and which he tries to hold and in his Art to recreate. 
To that end he bends every resource straining at what limits him. 
If he could only be free, free to rise beyond the limits of expression 
into belag! at his prophetic vision of man's destiny assuming himself 
the lineaments of it, in stature grown gigantic, rearing upwards be- 
yond the narrow clouds of earth into the unmeasured space of night, 
his cotmtenance glowing, his arms outstretched in an embrace of 
wider worlds! This is the spirit and the gesture of Superman. 
— So I'm not unhappy. Now work begins again. For weeks there'll 
be no mail in Seward and for more weeks none here. 

109 



WILDERNESS 

Friday, December sixth. 

I'm reading a little book on Diirer. What a splendid civilization 
that was in the Middle Ages, with all its faults. To men with my 
interests can anything be more conclusive proof of the superiority of 
that age to this than the position of the artist and the scholar in the 
community? Let me quote from Diirer's diary. (Antwerp, a banquet 
at the burgomaster's hall.) 

" All their service was of silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and 
very costly meats. All their wives were there also. And as I was being led to 
the table the company stood on both sides as if they were leading some great 
lord. And there were among them men of very high position, who all treated 
me with respectful bows, and promised to do everything in their power agreea- 
ble to me that they knew of. And as I was sitting there in such grandeur, 
Adrian Horebouts, the syndic of Antwerp, came with two servants and presented 
me with four cans of wine in the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and 
they had bid him say that they wish thereby to show their respect for me and 
assure me of their good will. Wherefore I returned my humble thanks — etc. 
After that came Master Peeter, the town carpenter, and presented me with two 
cans of wine, with the offer of his willing services. So when we had spent a 
long and merry time together till late at night, they accompanied us home with 
lanterns in great honor." 

Oh land of porcelain bath-tubs! A man has only to leave all 
that by which we to-day estimate culture to realize that all of his 
own civilization goes with him right to the back woods, and lives 
there with him refined and undiminished by the hardships there. 

Civihzation is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the 
few or of the milUons, nor by monarchy, republicanism, or even Free- 
dom, nor by whether we work with hands or levers, — but by the final 
fruit of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art. 
The obituary of to-day in America has surely now been written in the 
poor workshop of some struggling, unknown man. That is all that 
the future will know of us. 

All records for winds are broken by what rages to-night. From 

no 




GET UP!' 



HOME 

the northwest it piles into our cove. The windows are coated with 
salt, and tons of flying water sail in clouds out of the bay hiding the 
mountains from the base to half their height. Our rafters bend be- 
neath the blast ; ice— from we know not where — falls upon us with a 
thundering noise. The canvases suspended aloft sway and flap, and 
from end to end of the cabin the breeze roves at will. It's so ridicu- 
lously bad and noisy and cold that Rockwell and I just laugh. But 
the wood is plentiful for we cut some more to-day. 

Last night at bedtime the wind had risen. At some midnight hour 
the stove went out for I awoke at two and found the cold all about us 
and the wind hard at it. So with a generous use of kerosene the fire 
was made to bvuTi again and I returned to a good night's rest. Some- 
how one doesn't mind short exposures to the cold. Many a day I 
have stood naked out in the wind and then become at once glow- 
ing warm again in the hot cabin. Baked bread to-day and it turned 
out very well. Painted, shivered, wrote, and to-night shall try to 
design a picture of the " Weird of the Gods. " But at this moment 
our supper is ready and two hungry, cold mortals cannot be kept from 
their com mush. 

Saturday, December seventh. 

Late ! Now that we have a clock — I stole one in Seward — we live 
by system, our hours are regular. The clock I set by the tide, marking 
the rise of the water in the new-fallen snow. We rise at 7.30. It is 
then not yet sunrise but fairly light. Breakfast is soon cooked and 
eaten. To start the blood going hard for a good day's work we spring 
out-of-doors and chop and split and saw in the glorious, icy north- 
wind. Then painting begins. I have scared Olson away — poor soul — 
but I make it up by calling on him just at dark when my painting hours 
are over. 

Now it's eleven at night and I've still my bit to read. Whew, but 

113 



WILDERNESS 

it's cold to-night and the wind is rising to a gale. And last night! — 
what a bitter one. I got up four times to feed the ravenous fire. And 
even so the water pails froze. We cannot afiford to let it freeze much 
in the cabin for our stores are all exposed. What if the Christmas 
cider should freeze and burst! I painted out of doors to-day — in 
sneakers ! and stood it just about as long as one would imagine. To 
love the cold is a sign of youth — and we do love it, the Awakener. 

Sunday, December eighth. 

Log cabins stuffed with moss should be wonderful in the tropics. 
I'm about frozen. On this work table I must weight my papers down 
to keep them from flying about the room. And the wind is icy ; it is 
bitterly, bitterly cold. Olson says we need expect no colder weather 
than this all winter. Of course we don't really mind it. The stove is 
red hot and we may go as close to it as we please, and the bed is warm 
— except towards morning. At night I move my jugs of yeast and 
cider toward the stove, fill the " air-tight " to the top, pile blankets 
and wrappers upon the bed, and sleep happily. 

The gale still rages, fortunately not with its utmost fury. This 
morning Rockwell and I hurried through our chores and then climbed 
to the low ridge of the island. The snow in the woods is crusted and 
bore us up well so that we traveled with ease and soon reached the 
crest. Ah, there it was glorious ; such blue and gold and rose ! We 
looked down upon the spit and saw the sea piling upon it; we looked 
seaward and saw the snow blown from the land, the spray and the 
mist rising in clouds toward the sun, — and the sun, the beautiful sun 
shone on us. We took a number of pictures and then with numbed 
fingers and toes raced down the slope playing man-pursued-by-a-bear. 
Rockwell was wonderful to look at with his cheeks so red and clear. 
He loved our little excursion. 

And for the rest of the day we've worked. I stretched and coated 

114 




MAN 



HOME 

three large canvases, hateful job ! painted, sawed wood, felled a tree — 
which the wind carried over onto another so that there it hangs neither 
up nor down, — and that's about all. It's again eleven and time for 
bed. The night is beautiful even if it is terrible; and the young 
moon is near setting. 

Monday, December ninth. 

It blows worse than ever, and it is colder. All day the blue sky 
has been hidden in clouds of vapor and flying spray. The bay seethes 
and smokes and huge breakers race across it. It is truly bitter weather. 
Olson to-night ventured the prophecy that this was about the cul- 
mination of winter — but I know Olson by now. I cut another tree this 
morning to release the one of yesterday and both fell with a magni- 
ficent crash. Then we went to work with the cross-cut saw and 
stocked our day's wood. 

Olson called this afternoon and related his recollection of the 
early days of Nome. 

'* A certain man, " he began, " deserted from a whaler that 
stopped for water on the north coast of Alaska. He'd been shang- 
haied in San Francisco and was a tailor by trade. He made his way 
down the coast with the occasional help of the esquimaux. At last 
he came to Nome. The men were gone from the native village but 
a woman took him in. She was named English Mary. Now she had 
heard of the gold finds on the Yukon and she asked the man if he was 
a miner. He answered, * Yes. ' * You come with me, * she said, and 
led him to a certain creek and showed him the shining nuggets lying 
thick upon the bottom. But the tailor really knew nothing about 
gold and let it lie. He continued down the coast and was at last 
carried to St. Michael. There he met a missionary and a young 
fellow who had come to Alaska with a party of prospectors. With 
those two he returned in a boat to Nome. You'll hear different 
stories, to be sure, of how they got there but this is the right one, for 

117 



WILDERNESS 

I've seen the boat they came in lying there oflf the beach. Well, they 
came and saw the gold but none of them could say for certain what it 
was. So one of them went off to get a man from the party of pros- 
pectors with whom the young fellow had come to Alaska. At last 
they got him there and he proved that it was sure enough gold. 
They staked their claims and began to work them. But word of gold 
travels fast and already others began to come. The miner of that 
first party drew up mining laws for the coimtry and these were en- 
forced. I was up on the Yukon when I heard of the first find at Nome. 
I went down and arrived there in the fall, a little more than a year 
after the strike. By that time there was quite a number there. 

" Some man had drawn up a plan of a town and was selling lots. 
I bought one on the northwest comer of the block. It was on the 
tundra. (Tundra is vegetation covered ice, soggy to a foot's depth.) 
There was a tent on my lot and some wood, so I bought those too. 
But shortly after when I came home one day from prospecting I found 
that both the tent and the wood had been stolen. I bought lumber 
for the frame of a new tent. It cost me thirty dollars; that is, fifty 
cents a foot. By that time all kinds of people were pouring into Nome. 
They were taking out gold on the creek, those that had claims, at the 
rate of $5000 in a couple of hours. It was so heavy in the sand you 
couldn't handle a pan-full. 

" Someone cut into my tent and cleaned me out — but I had nothing 
much besides a jack-knife. I borrowed ten dollars and went to 
work at a dollar an hour. A couple of rascals had come there, a judge 
and a lawyer ; and they began to get busy swindling everybody out of 
their titles to claims. It was said openly that if you saw anyone's 
claim ' jump it, * and the lawyers would make more money for you 
than you could get out in gold. There was no use in a man without 
money trying to hold a claim. And the crowd that was there ! Gam- 
blers, sharps, actors, — men and women of every kind — and they did 
act so foolish! — all out of their heads over the gold. The brothels 
were running wide open and robberies occurred in the town by day- 
light. Every man slept with his gun beside him and if he shot it was 
to kill. The robbers chloroformed men as they slept in their tents. 

118 




WOMAN 



HOME 

There were thousands of people then and you could look out on the 
beach and see them swarming like flies. Everything was overturned 
for gold, — the entire beach for ten miles both ways from Nome was 
shoveled off into the sea. They dug under the Indian village till the 
houses fell in, and even imder the graveyard. " 

And so Olson's story continues. A story of his life would really be 
— as an old pioneer in Seward told me — a history of Alaska. Because 
Olson has never succeeded he has been everjrwhere and tried every- 
thing. I have not done him justice in my abridgment of his Nome 
story. His recollections are so intimate. He remembers the words 
spoken in every situation and never, no matter how much an adven- 
ture centers in himself, does he depart in what he tells of himself 
from his character as I know him. 

I would not have devoted all of the time I have to this day's entry 
if I had not a good day's work to my credit including the conception of 
a new picture so vivid that the doing of it will be mere copying. It is 
the " North Wind. " Surely after the past four days I may tell with 
authority of that wild Prince from the North. 

Wednesday, December eleventh. 

Yesterday was too gloomy a day for me to risk a page in this jour- 
nal. As to weather it was another fierce one, cold and windy. As to 
work accomplished — nothing. Olson in his cabin, on such a day, is 
a treat to see. I open the door and enter. There he sits near the 
stove, a black astrakhan cap on his head and the two female goats in 
full possession of the cabin. Nanny the milch goat is a most affec- 
tionate creature. She lays her head on Olson's lap and as he scratches 
her head her eyes close in blissful content. 

'* See her pretty little face, " says Olson, " and her lovely lips. " 
He's certainly the kindest creature to animals — and to human ones 
too we have good reason to know. 

121 



WILDERNESS 

To-day it is milder. The vapor is thick on the bay but it lies low 
upon the water and the magnificent mountains sparkle in the sunlight. 

Work has gone better for me and it has been a day not without 
accomplishment. I baked bread— beautiful bread, cut wood, helped 
Olson a bit, and had a glorious rough-house with my son. He's a 
great fighter. I train him for the fights he's bound to have some day 
by letting him attack me with all his strength; and that has come 
to be not a little thing. 




Friday, December thirteenth. 

In the midst of letter writing I stop to note down a dramatic cloud 
effect. That's the way the day's work goes. If I'm out-of-doors busy 
with the saw or axe I jump at once to my paints when an idea comes. 
It's a fine life and more and more I realize that for me at least such 
isolation — not from my friends but from the unfriendly world — is the 
only right life for me. My energy is too unrestrained to have offered 
to it the bait for fight and play that the city holds out, without its being 
spent in absolutely profitless and trivial enterprises. And here what 

122 



HOME 

a haven of peace ! Almost the last touch is added to its perfection by 
the sweet nature of the old man Olson. I have never known such a 
man. I'm no admirer of the " picturesqueness " of rustic character. 
Seen close to it's generally damnably stupid and coarse. I have seen 
the working class from near at hand and without illusion. But Olson I 
he has such tact and understanding, such kindness and courtesy as 
put him outside of all classes, where true men belong. 

To-night it looked like the picture I have drawn. These are 
beautiful days. Yesterday it was as calm in our little cove as one 
would look for on a summer's day. The day was blue and mild, a day 
for work. I made of my " North Wind " the most beautiful pic- 
ture that ever was. I stood it facing outwards in the doorway and 
from far off it still showed as vivid, more vivid, and brilliant than 
nature itself. It's the first time I've taken my pictures into the broad 
light. There's where they should be seen. 

Last night was calm until four o'clock in the morning. Then the 
wind again struck in and the trees roared and the roof creaked and 
groaned. To-day it was calmer. We began by felling a tall spruce 
more than two feet in diameter. It lies now near the cabin a great 
screen of evergreen. Its wood should last us many weeks. I painted 
out-of-doors on two pictures. That's bitterly cold work — to crouch 
down in the snow ; through bent knees the blood goes slowly, feet are 
nmnbed, fingers stiffen. But then the warm cabin is near. . . . 

This minute I've returned from splitting wood out in the moon- 
light. On days when painting goes with spirit the chores are left 
undone. 

If only it were possible to put down faithfully all of Olson's 
stories ! Last night he told of his return to San Francisco from the 
Yukon thirty years ago, how the little band of weather-beaten, 
crippled miners appeared on their return to civilization. Olson was on 
crutches from scurvy, his beard and hair were of a year's growth; 

123 



WILDERNESS 

all were in their working clothes, all bearded, brown, free spirited. 
And their wealth they carried on them in bags, gold, some to $7000 
worth. As Olson tells it you yourself live in that day. You hear the 
German landlady of the "Chicago Hotel" in San Francisco, a 
motherly woman who put all the grub on the table at once so you could 
help yourself, say, *' You boys have some of you been in Alaska for 
years and I know about how you've lived. Now that you're back you 
must have a hankering for some things. Tell me whatever you want 
and I'll get it for you. " And up spoke one big fellow, " I remember 
how my mother used to have cabbage. I want you to get me one big 
head and cook it and let me have it all to myself!" 

That night they went to the music halls in their miners' clothes 
all as they were, and drank gallons of beer; and from the boxes and 
the balconies the girls all clamored to be asked to join them — who 
were such free spenders. Two days later they were paid in coin for 
their gold — by the mint — and all went to the tailors and got them fine 
suits of clothes. . . . And so it continues. And he told of Custer's 
massacre. And, to-night of the sagacity of horses in leading a trapper 
back to the traps he'd set and maybe lost. When a horse swims with 
you across a stream guide him with your hand on his neck, but pull 
not ever so little on the line or he'll rear backwards in the water and 
likely drown himself and you. 

Saturday, December fourteenth. 

A pretty useless day. No work accomplished but the daily chores. 
What is there to say of such a day. Olson brought over his letter to 
Kathleen to-night and read it to us. It's just like him to be really 
himself even at letter writing. The letter is full of nice humor. 
" She'll think what kind of an old fool is that," he said, " but what 
do I care. I'll just say whatever I feel like saying." And he always 
does. In a mild way he lives Blake's proverb, "Always speak the 

124 




FOREBODING 



HOME 

truth and base men will avoid you." Some people have found Olson 
very rough and ill-mannered. 

Made bread to-night and stamped about seventy-five envelopes 
with my device. To-night it is mild and overcast. A light snow has 
begun to fall. So far this winter the fall of snow has been extremely 
light. It should bank up almost to the cabin's eaves. . . . My bed 
awaits me. Good-night. 

Sunday, December fifteenth. 

This is another day that is hardly worth recording, one that would 
not be missed from a life. 

It's time something were again said about yoxmg Rockwell who is 
the real, live, crowning beauty of the commimity. Weeks have passed 
since I last recorded his fresh delight in everything here. It is the 
same to-day. For hours he plays alone out-of-doors. Now he's an 
animal crawling on all fours along the trunk of a tree that I have 
felled, going out upon its horizontal branches as the porcupines do, 
hiding himself in the foliage and growling fiercely — hours long it 
seems — while the foolish goats flee in terror and the foxes race wildly 
up and down the extent of their corral. Again he's a browsing creature 
eating the spruce needles with decided relish, — doing it so seriously. 
Truly he lives the part he plays when it is one of his beloved wild 
creatures. Then he tears up and down the beach mounted like a four- 
year-old kid on a stick horse, yelling as loud as he can, going to the 
water's edge, and racing the swell as it mounts the slope. And pres- 
ently I capture him for his end of the saw. At that he no longer 
knows fatigue, — he's as good as a man. He really never tires and the 
work goes on with a fine, jolly good-will that makes of the hardest 
chore one of the day's pleasures. Rockwell is lonely at times; but 
if he tells me he'd like somebody to play with he's sure to add in the 
same breath, "Ah well, never mind." 

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WILDERNESS 

I don't know how such a haphazard education if continued would 
fit him for participation in the " practical " affairs of life. But I am 
convinced that if all the little beauties of spirit that can now be seen 
budding could be allowed free, clean growth, quite away from the 
brutal hand of mass influences, we'd have nothing less than the full 
and perfect flowering of a human soul ; — and in our reachings toward 
supermanhood none can do more. 

Here, as an example, is an achievement of his imagination that it is 
hard to pictxire as surviving long in the atmosphere of a large school. 
Rockwell for two or three years has called himself the " mother of 
all things. " It is not a figure of speech with him but an attitude to- 
wards life. If it were the creed of a great poet — and it could be — 
the discerning critic might discover it to be of the profoundest signifi- 
cance in modem thought. In little Rockwell it is of one piece with his 
whole spirit which expresses itself in his love for all animals, the 
fiercest to the mildest, and for all growing things. The least manifes- 
tation of that which is thought to be typical cruelty of boys outrages 
his whole nature. 

I am far from believing Rockwell to be a unique example of 
childhood. I think that while cruelty appears uppermost where boys 
herd together, the love of animals is no less characteristic of many 
sensitive children. But of this I am certain, — that nothing will make 
a child more ridiculous in the eyes of the mob child than this most 
perfect and most beautiful attitude of some children toward Ufe. In 
considering the education of a child and weighing what is to be gained 
or lost by one system or another I am inclined to think that no gain 
can outweigh the loss to a child of its loving, non-predatory impulses. 

Tuesday, December seventeenth. 

Once a miner died and presently fotmd his way to the gates of 
heaven. 

128 




LONE MAN 



HOME 

" What do you want? " said St. Peter. 

" To come in, of course." 

*' What sort of man are you? " 

"I'm a miner." 

" Well," said St. Peter, " we've never had anyone of that kind 
here before, so I suppose you might as well come in." 

But the miner once within the gates fell to tearing up the golden 
streets of heaven, digging ditches and tunnels all over the place and 
making a frightful mess of it all. At last a second miner presented 
himself at the gates. 

"Not on your life," said St. Peter. "We have one miner here 
and we only wish we knew some way to get rid of him. He's tearing 
up the whole place. 

"Only let me in," said the second miner, "and I'll promise to 
get rid of that fellow for you." So St. Peter admitted him. 

This second miner easily found the other who was hard at work 
amid a shower of flying earth. Going up to him he cried in an under- 
tone: "Partner! They've struck gold in Hell! " 

The miner dropped his work and sprang toward the gates. 
"Peter, Peter, open, open! Let me out of Heaven, I'm off to 
Hell!" 

What a book of yams and jokes this is becoming! To-day 
work went a Uttle better — and the weather a Uttle worse. It 
pours. For the end of December it is wonderfully mild; but 
then I expect Uttle really cold weather here. To-night it is full 
moon. The tide is at its highest for the year and the southeast 
wind piles the water up till it reaches and overflows the land. 
Olson expects it to touch his house to-night if the wind continues. 
Tree trunks, uprooted somewhere from the soil, monstrous and 
grotesque, grind along our beach; the water is full of driftwood 
and wreckage. 

131 



WILDERNESS 

Wednesday, December eighteenth. 

There's a little bucket of dough that stands forever on the shelf 
behind the stove. Sour dough is made with yeast, flour, and water 
to the consistency of a bread sponge and then allowed to stand in- 
definitely. For all that you take out you add more flour and water to 
what's left in the bucket and that shortly is as fit for use as the origi- 
nal mixture. Alaskans use it extensively as the basis for bread and 
hot cakes. You add but a pinch of soda and a Uttle water to the 
proper consistency and it's all ready for use. The old time Alaskans 
rejoice in the honorable title of " Sour Doughs." 

Olson's cabin in Seward stands comfortably on a little lot in a 
quite thickly settled part of the town. I wondered at his aflluence in 
possessing a house and lot. Here is its history as he told it to me to- 
night. When Olson first came to Seward he built — or he bought 
already built — a little cabin standing on a part of the beach now occu- 
pied by the railroad yard. In course of time he went to Valdez for a 
winter's work. Returning, he found no cabin. It was gone from that 
spot and he has not found it since. But corporations and govern- 
ments are nothing to Olson when he feels himself injured. He went 
to one official and said, *' See here ! Winter's at hand and I have no 
house, what are you going to do about it?" Well, they would see 
what could be done, and in time referred him to a higher authority. 
"I want a cabin," Olson said to this one. "If you don't give me the 
lumber to build one with I'll have to steal it from you. I have no 
money and no cabin. Winter is here and I'm certainly going to live 
in a cabin this winter." So they gave him an old shed to tear down 
and use but told him not to build on the beach. The town of Seward 
was laid off in lots. By the stakes Olson could tell a lot from a street, 
and fair and square on a lot, somebody's lot, he put his cabin. The 
owner of the land was tolerant and let it stay there a few years ; but 
one day he ordered Olson's house taken off. So Olson carried it 

132 



HOME 

somehow out into the middle of the street where it fitted in nicely 
among the tree stumps. Well and good for a little time till in the 
summer before last the town of Seward improved that street and sent 
a man and team to remove the stumps. "If you're paid to remove 
the stumps you may as well move my house for me, " said Olson. 
"Where to?" asked the man. "You can suit yourself," said Olson. 
So the cabin was again planted on a "desirable" lot of somebody's, 
— and there it stands to-day, neat and trim, with a little wooden walk 
connecting its doorway with the plank sidewalk of the street. Alaska 
is, to be sure, a great free country ! 

To-day has been wonderfully mild and comfortable. From time 
to time the rain has fallen gently. Over the water the clouds have 
drooped, hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save 
for the long swell— and this more to be heard upon the beach than 
seen. Rockwell and I at dusk walked the shore out to the point be- 
tween the coves. We saw the glowing sky where the sun had set, 
the mountainous islands to the southward, and our own cove and its 
mountain ramparts — beautiful in the black and white of the spruces 
and the snow. If I but had my prepared canvas I'd make large studies 
of the many views from this point. 

Rockwell at dinner begged me repeatedly to have part of his 
junket besides my own. I wondered at it for although he is always 
considerate and polite this was almost too much. And in other ways 
I noticed his alacrity to be obliging. Later in the day he told me, 
after much embarrassment, that he had made up his mind to be 
nicer about everything and to do more for me, — and yet I had pre- 
viously f oimd no fault with him ; how could I ! So ends a day ; — and 
again I think that in this country I would gladly live for years. 



133 




CHAPTER VIII 



CHRISTMAS 



Thursday, December nineteenth. 

^^^^^^HIS day is never to be forgotten, so beautiful, so calm, 
£^^^ so still with the earth and every branch and tree muffled 
A in deep, feathery, new-fallen snow. And all day the 

^^^^^ softest clouds have drifted lazily over the heaven 
shrouding the land here and there in veils of falling 
snow, while elsewhere or through the snow itself the sun shone. 
Golden shadows, dazzling peaks, fairy tracery of branches against the 
blue summer sea ! It was a day to Live, — and work could be forgotten. 
So Rockwell and I explored the woods, at first reverently tread- 
ing one path that the snow about us might still lie undisturbed. 
But soon the cub in the boy broke out and he rolled in the 
deepest thickets, shook the trees down upon himself, lay still 
in the snow for me to cover him completely, washed his face till 
it was crimson, and wound up with a naked snow-bath. I photo- 

134 



CHRISTMAS 

graphed him standing thus in the deep snow at the water's edge 
with the mountains far ofif behind him. Then he dried himself 
at the roaring fire we'd made ready and felt like a new boy — if 
that can be imagined. We both sketched out-of-doors for a little 
while in the morning like young lady amateurs. I tried it again 
two or three times throughout the day with indifferent results ; it 
was too beautiful. We cut wood too, and that went with a zest. 
While Rockwell dried himself after his bath I searched in the 
woods for a Christmas tree and cut a fair-sized one at last for 
its top. Christmas is right upon us now. To-night the cranberries 
stew on the stove. 

Friday, December twentieth. 

The beautiful snow is fast going under the falling rain! With 
only five more days before Christmas it is probable we'll have 
little if any snow on the ground then. A snowless Christmas in 
Alaska ! 

This day was as uneventful as could be. Part of the morning was 
consumed in putting a new handle into the sledge hammer. It was 
too dark to paint long, really hardly an hour of daylight. These days 
slip by so easily and with so little accomplished! Only by burning 
midnight oil can much be done. 

Sunday, December twenty-second. 

Both yesterday and to-day it has poured rain. They've not been 
tmpleasant days, however. Occasional let-ups have allowed us 
to cut wood and get water without inconvenience. This morning 
Olson, fearing that a continuance of the mild weather would melt 
the ice in the lake and send his bags of fish to the bottom, went 
out to the center of the lake where they hung suspended through 

135 



WILDERNESS 

a hole in the ice and brought them in. But so precarious has the 
ice become that he carried a rope and took me along in case of 
trouble. To get out upon the ice we had to go some distance along 
the lake's shore. 

Returning we missed meeting Rockwell who had gone to join us. 
Not for some time did it occur to me to call him. It was well I did 
call. The poor boy on not seeing us had suddenly concluded we were 
drowned. A strip of water separated him from the ice. He was on 
the point of wading into this at the moment I called him. He was still 
terribly excited when he reached us. 

Both days I have been occupied with humble, housewifely duties, 
— baking, washing, mending, and now the cabin is adorned with our 
drying clothes. Here where water must be carried so far it is the 
wet days that are wash days. Darning is a wretched nuisance. 
We should have socks enough to tide us over our stay here. Last 
night after Rockwell had been put to bed I sat down and did two 
of the best drawings I have made. At half past twelve I finished 
them, and then to calm my elation a bit for sleep read in the 
" Odyssey." At this my second reading of the book it's as in- 
tensely interesting — or more so — than before. As a story it is in- 
comparably better than the "Iliad." To me it is full of suggestions 
for wonderful pictures. 

Ten days from now it comes due for Olson to go to Seward. If 
only then we have mild, calm weather ! But as yet we have seen no 
steamer go to Seward since early in the month. It looks as if the 
steamship companies had combined to deprive Alaska of its Christ- 
mas mail and freight in a policy of making the deadlock with the 
government over the mail contracts intolerable. Meanwhile, instead 
of serving us, the jaunty little naval cruisers that summered here in 
idleness doubtless loaf away the winter months in comfortable south- 
em ports. 

136 




CAIN 



CHRISTMAS 

Monday, December twenty-third. 

Up to this morning the hard warm rain continued, and now the 
stars are all out and it might be thought a night in spring. At eight- 
thirty I walked over in sneakers and underwear for a moment's call 
on Olson, but he had gone to bed. And now although we'll have no 
snow the weather is fair for Christmas. 

If Olson believes, as he says, that Christmas will pass as any other 
day he is quite wrong. The tree waits to be set up and it will surely be 
a thing of beauty blazing with its many candles in this somber log in- 
terior. I've given up the idea of dressing Olson as Santa Claus in goat's 
wool whiskers. Santa Claus without presents would move us to tears. 
There are a few little gifts, — a pocketknife and a kitchen set of knife, 
fork, and can-opener for Olson. An old broken fountain pen for Rock- 
well, some sticks of candy, — and the diimer ! What shall it be? Wait 1 

It is midnight. I've just finished a good drawing. The lamp is 
about at its accustomed low mark — yesterday it had to be filled twice ! 
Those nights when without a clock I sat up so late and to so uncertain 
an hour I have discovered by the lamp and clock together to have been 
really long. My bedtime then was after two or three o'clock — but I 
arose later. To-day I finished a little picture for Olson and so did 
Rockwell. These were forgotten in my list of presents as I've just 
^iwitten it. I have shown in my picture the king of the island himself 
striding out to feed the goats while Billy, rearing on his hind legs, 
tries to steal the food on the way. Rockwell's picture is of Olson 
surrounded by all the goats in a more peaceful mood. Olson's cabin 
is in the background. I wish we had more to give the good old man. 
At any rate he dines with us. 

Christmas Eve! 

We've cleaned house, stowed everything away upon shelves and 
hooks and in corners, moved even my easel aside ; decorated the roof 

139 



WILDERNESS 

timbers with dense hemlock boughs, stowed quantities of wood 
behind the stove — for there must be no work on that holiday — 
and now both Rockwell and I are in a state of suppressed excitement 
over to-morrow. 

What a strange thing ! Nothing is coming to us, no change in any 
respect in the routine of our lives but what we make ourselves, — and 
yet the day looms so large and magnificent before us ! I suppose the 
greatest festivals of our lives are those at which we dance ourselves. 
You need nothing from outside, — not even illusion. Certainly chil- 
dren need to be given scarcely an idea to develop out of it an atmos- 
phere of mystery and expectation as real and thrilling to themselves 
as if it rested upon true belief. 

Well, the tree is ready, cut to length with a cross at the foot to 
stand upon, and a cardboard and tin-foil star to hang at its top. And 
now as to Christmas weather. This morning, as might just as well 
have been expected, was again overcast. Toward evening light snow 
began to fall. It soon turned to rain and the rain now has settled 
down to a gentle, even, all-night-and-day pace. Let it snow or 
rain and grow dark at midday! The better shall be our good 
Christmas cheer within. This is the true Christmas land. The day 
should be dark, the house further overshadowed by the woods, tall 
and black. And there in the midst of that somber, dreadful gloom 
the Christmas tree should blaze in glory unrivaled by moon or sun 
or star. 

Christmas Day on Fox Island. 

It is mild ; the ground is almost bare and a warm rain falls. First 
the Christmas tree all dripping wet is brought into the house and set 
upon its feet. It is nine feet and a half high and just touches the peak 
of the cabin. There it stands and dries its leaves while Rockwell and 
I prepare the feast. 

140 




SUPERMAN 



CHRISTMAS 

Both stoves are kept burning and the open door lets in the 
cool air. Everything goes beautifully ; the wood bums as it should, 
the oven heats, the kettle boils, the beans stew, the bread browns 
in the oven just right, and the new pudding sauce foams up as 
rich and delicious as if instead of the first it were the hundredth 
time I'd made it. And now everything is ready. The clock stands 
at a quarter to three. Night has about fallen and lamp light is 
in the cabin. 

" Run, Rockwell, out-of-doors and play awhile." Quickly I stow 
the presents about the tree, hang sticks of candy from it, and light 
the candles. 

Rockwell runs for Mr. Olson, and just as they approach the cabin 
the door opens and fairyland is revealed to them. It is wonderful. 
The interior of the cabin is illuminated as never before, as perhaps 
no cabin interior ever was among these wild mountains. Then all 
amazed and wondering those two children come in. Who knows 
which is the more entranced? 

Then Olson and I drink in deep solemnity a silent toast ; and the 
old man says, "I'd give everything — yes everything I have in the 
world — to have your wife here now! " 

And the presents are handed out. For Olson this picture from 
Rockwell. Ah, he thinks it's wonderful! Then for Rockwell this 
book — a surprise from Seward. Next for Olson a painting, a kitchen 
set, and a pocketknife. By this time he's quite overcome. It's the 
first Christmas he has ever had! And Rockwell, when he is handed 
two old copies of the ** Geographic Magazine " cries in amazement, 
" Why I thought I was to have no presents ! " But he gets besides a 
pocketknife and the broken fountain pen and sits on the bed looking 
at the things as if they were the most wonderful of gifts. 

Dinner is now set upon the table. Olson adjusts his glasses and 
reads the formal menu that lies at his place. 

143 



WILDERNESS 



So we feast and have a jolly good time. 




Pec fife) 

♦ €rtiree *■ 

JfioQ/tefft a fa. ^o^JslancC 

hearts ct /a Xcsvrrecf'QA >3o/ 
^vr/»^(es Cn Cajsero/e 



C ranbe rry Uavei 



f JJessert 



J'^um T^i/ctdtn/^ A(.(zon</cjto 



It is a true party and looks like 
one. Rockwell and I are in clean 
white shirts, Olson is magnificent 
in a new flannel shirt and his Sun- 
day trousers and waistcoat. He 
wears a silk tie and in it a gold 
nugget pin. He is shaven, and 
clipped about the ears. How grand 
he looks! The food is good and 
plentiful, the night is long, only the 
Christmas candles are short-Uved 
and we extinguish them to save 
them for another time. Finally as 
the night deepens Olson leaves us 
amid mutual expressions of delight 
in each other's friendship, and Rock- 
well and I tumble into bed. 

The next day and the next it is 
mild, resting — the weather seems to 
be — at this peaceful holiday season. 
We cut no wood and do little work. 
We write long letters, both of us, 
and consume at meal-time the food 
left over from Christmas. I read the 



j^vf, x^.,e>.r son-bori "Odyssey," great story! Just now 

jVo„„ su,re^ jVomr Ctccer I am past that magnificent slaughter 

*■ of the wooers, else these delayed 

^uscc Ay ^Ac German Qarxot . pages wouM Still bo uuwritten. A 

few more Odysseys to read here in this wild place and one could 

forget the modern world and return in manners and speech and 

144 



CHRISTMAS 

thought to the heroic age. That would be an adventure worth try- 
ing ! Maybe we are not so deeply permeated with the culture of to- 
day that we could not throw it off. Surely the spirit of the heroes 
strikes home to our hearts as we read of them in the ancient books. 

Sattirday, December twenty-eighth. 

For the first time in days the sun has risen in a clear sky and 
shone upon the mountains across from us. It is colder, for ice has 
formed again on the tub of water out-of-doors. But there is a little 
wind. 

I am writing in preparation for Olson's trip. He too is making 
ready. Food for the foxes is on the stove for many days' feeding, 
his engine gets a little burnishing — it's no insignificant voyage to 
Seward in the winter. If only it holds out fair and calm until a steamer 
comes! There's the hitch now. We have seen none go to Seward 
since the first of the month. 

To-morrow probably the Christmas tree must come down. The 
hemlock trimmings shed all over the cabin till to-day I tore them out. 
Last night we had our final lighting of the tree. Rockwell and I stood 
out-of-doors and looked in at it. What a marvelous sight in the 
wilderness. If only some hapless castaways had strayed in upon us 
lured by that light ! We sang Christmas carols out there in the dark, 
did a Christmas dance on the shore, and then came in and while the 
tree still burned told each other stories. Rockwell's story was about 
the adventures of some children in the woods, full of thrilling climaxes. 
It came by the yard. I told him of an Indian boy who, longing for 
Christmas, went out into the dark woods at night and closed his eyes. 
And how behind his closed eyes he found a world rich in everything 
the other lacked. There was his Christmas tree and to it came the 
wild animals. They got each a present, the mother porcupine a box 
of little silken balls to stick onto her quills for decoration, and the 

145 



WILDERNESS 

father porcupine a toothbrush because his large teeth were so very 
yellow. After the story it was bedtime. Well . . . this fair day has 
passed, and with the night have come clouds and a cold gloom fore- 
boding snow. But I have learned to expect nothing of the weather 
but what it gives us. 

Sunday, December twenty-ninth. 

Squirlie's birthday party. Squirlie is seated in a condensed milk 
box. At his back hangs a brown sweater. About him stand his 
presents consisting chiefly of feathers. The table is spread with the 
feast in shells and the whole is brilliantly illuminated by a Christmas 
tree candle. Long life to Squirlie and may he never fall to pieces nor 
be devoured by moths ! 

Monday, December thirtieth. 

Yesterday it rained gently, to-day it pours. I sit here with the 
door open and the stove slumbering — such weather in this country 
that the world believes to be an iceberg ! But in Seward and on the 
mountains no doubt it is snowing enough. To-day I made so good a 
drawing that I'm sitting up as if the flight of time and the coming of 
morning were no concern of mine. It is half -past twelve ! 

New Year's Eve! Tuesday. This is the tenth anniversary of 
Rockwell's parents and I have kept it as well as I could, working all 
day upon a drawing for his mother and to-night holding a kind of song 
service with Rockwell. Rockwell, who at nine years has every reason 
to celebrate to-day, however he may feel at twenty-nine, has written 
his mother a sweet little letter. I'm terribly homesick to-night and 
don't know what to say about it in these genial pages. It has been a 
solemn day. 

When Olson was here to-night I began from playing the flute to 
sing. He was delighted and I continued. What a strange performance 

146 



nmiOlHIllinmi ■»••>■ 




THE NORTH WIND 



CHRISTMAS 

here in the wilderness, a little boy, an old man, listening as I sing 
loudly and solemnly to them without accompaniment. Olson brought 
us a pan of goat's milk to-day, as he often does. I make junket of it 
and it is a truly delicious dish, ever so much better than when made 
of cow's milk. It resembles a jelly of pure cream. 

It has rained hard most of the day. At times a mist has hung in a 
band halfway up the mountain's height across the bay. It is a remark- 
able sight. To-night is as warm as any night in spring or autumn. 
It thaws continually and even the ice that once covered the ground 
beneath the snow is fast disappearing. The year goes out without a 
steamer having been seen to come with the Christmas mail. 

It is close to midnight. I have one secret resolution to make for 
the new year and, that I may make it as earnestly and as truly as 
possible, the stars and the black sky shall be my witness. And so 
with the year nineteen hundred and eighteen I end this page. 



149 




CHAPTER IX 



NEW YEAR 



^^^^i^^O Rockwell who asked what happened on the New Year 

^^^^ that everybody sat up to see it come we tried hard to 

A tell all sorts of yarns about explosions and rumblings, 

^^^^^ but he wouldn't believe a bit of it. He might have 

said, "How can anything like that happen here where 

nothing ever comes from the sky except rain?" 

So far the new year is just exactly like the old's latter end but 
that it is more joyous. And the joy came at eleven-thirty P.M. of 
January first, gliding by about two miles out in the bay, a dazzle of 
lights like a fairy citadel, the STEAMER ! At my cry Rockwell sat 
up in bed and gazed too. Olson unfortunately was in bed and we did 
not call him. So I set at once to work writing, tying up parcels, making 
lists, until two o'clock of this morning. 

At eight we had Olson out of bed. I hung about there threatening 
him, ordering him, begging him to hurry. Old men are hard to move 
fast. He shaved standing up there in his cabin with the door wide 
open and the goats playing about him. I let him have a bite of break- 
fast, but not much. The dory had to be unbound — for we tie them to 
the ground — and turned right-side up, and loaded and launched, — but 

150 



NEW YEAR 

all that only after half an hour's cranking of the engine, the infernal 
things ! It would look like snow one minute and be fair the next ; but 
it held fair enough finally for Olson to get off and disappear— to our 
immense joy. He laughs at our eagerness to get him off for the maU. 
Yesterday was Olson's day for celebrating and many times we 
drank to the New Year together. But I would work, to his disgust. 
Still he understands pretty well the strange madness that possesses 
me, and is not at all unsympathetic. I explained to him one day the 
difference between working to suit yourself and working to suit other 
people. He'd defy the world at any time he chose no matter how 
poor his fortunes. 

Well, now we wait for mail. Already I'm impatient for Olson's 
return and that cannot well be before the day after to-morrow. Rock- 
well and I walked around the bay in the afternoon more to have a 
look toward Seward where our mail comes from than for anything 
else. But Seward was hidden in falling snow. All the bay was 
shrouded in mist and snow. But our own cove was beautiful to look 
back upon with its white peaks and dark forest, and far down at the 
water's edge our tiny cabins from one of which the thick smoKe of 
the smoldering fire curled upwards. 

Sunday, January fifth. 

Olson is still away. It is wearing to wait this way in hope,— for 
we will hope even if the wind blows and the snow falls. And so it has 
done. The day following Olson's departure it was wonderfully fair 
and calm, but the next day, it being the day he should have returned, 
a heavy snowstorm set in. And to-day with less snow there was 
more wind,— not so much that he could not have come but enough 
that he didn't. We walked down the beach and scanned the bay 
with the glasses, and up to dark I looked continually for the little 
boat to be rounding the headland. 

151 



WILDERNESS 

It seems as if that were all the news, but the days have really been 
full of work and other interest. The snow itself, lying deep and light 
and over all^even the tree tops— is a delight. Rockwell and I 
played bear and hunter to-day tracking each other in the woods. 
Only the goats are miserable these days with their browse all covered 
but what they can gnaw from the tree trunks. Billy at this season is 




ANOTHER OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWINGS 



a fury. One has really to go armed with a clout. Yesterday he burst 
in the door of Olson's shed and then inside managed to shut the 
door on himself. When I investigated the strange banging that I'd 
been hearing for some time, I found him. He had even piled things 
against the door. While no actual damage has been done he has 
tossed every blessed thing about with his horns. Boxes, pails, sacks 
of grain, cans, rope, tools, all lie piled in confusion about the floor. 
It does no good to beat the creature. He will learn nothing. It is 
about one-thirty a. m. I've written more than I intended writing. 
My heart is set upon the mail and nothing else. 

152 



NEW YEAR 

Monday, January sixth. 

With Olson still away and the mail with him what can there be to 
report. It snows. It is so mild that we walk about hatless, coatless, 
mittenless. Drip, drip, drip, goes it from the eaves continuously. 
The snow has fallen from the trees. On the ground it lies deep and 
heavy. To-morrow maybe we shall take to snowshoes. Rockwell 
and I each took a trip along the beach to look for Olson. As I stood 
there peering into the haze toward Seward a head arose from the 
water close to me. It was a seal. He looked all about him for the 
greatest while, went imder, reappeared again near by once more, and 
then was gone. Billy burst open that shed of Olson's again. Some 
day I shall murder a goat ! 

Wednesday, January eighth. 

Two more days and Olson still away. I'm furious at him. Yester- 
day he could well have come, to-day it has been impossible. We 
seem to do little here but wait. Even at the height of to-day's storm 
I found myself continually going to the little window to look for a boat. 
Rain and snow, rain and snow ! Ah, if only we had our mail here — 
then these warm, white days would be delightful. Yesterday we wore 
our snowshoes for the first time, but only to tramp down the cove and 
look toward Seward. 

The only recompense for Olson's absence is Nanny's milk. I'm 
an expert milker now and can do the job before she finishes her cup 
of oats. I have to, for at the finish she leaps madly to escape me. 
Goat's milk junket and orange marmalade ; sublime ! 

Friday, January tenth. 

One hour ago it was as beautiful a moonlit night as one ever 
beheld. The softest veils of cloud passed the moon and cast over the 

153 



WILDERNESS 

earth endlessly varied, luminous shadows. The mountain tops, trees, 
rocks, and all, are covered with new snow ; the valleys and the lower 
levels are black where rain has cleared the trees. It is so beautiful 
here at times that it seems hard to bear. And now at this moment 
the rain falls as if it had fallen for all time and never would cease. Oh 
Olson, Olson ! Is it anything to you in your old age to be so madly 
wanted? Here it truly is conceivable that any condition of bad 
weather could visit us for months without relief. There seems no 
rhyme or reason to it until you see it as the reverse of marvelously 
fair weather ; a blue sky is here as wrong as rain in a rainless desert 
land. 

Nothing has happened. I am making good drawings and have 
made two small woodcuts. Billy to-day again tackled the door of 
Olson's shed. My fixing of the lock proved too good. That held — 
while he burst the door to pieces. I caught him at the finish of it; 
I become a maniac at such a time. I pursued the beast with a club 
in a mad chase through the heavy snow, catching him often enough 
to get some satisfaction at least in the beating I gave him. He fears 
me now and that's something gained. But it's a bad matter both for 
Billy and for me. 

It is now after midnight and I've just finished a drawing. Rock- 
well is concerned about these late hours and when I told him that I 
could work so very well alone at night he seriously suggested that 
I send him out in the daytime to stay all day without dinner so that I 
could work better. I'm reading about King Arthur and the round 
table to him; that's good for both of us. He has made himself a 
lance and a sword and to-morrow I expect to confer some sort of 
knighthood upon him. Apropos of the book of King Arthur, Rockwell 
said to-day, "I don't think the pictures in the book are half nice 
enough. I think of a wonderful picture when you read the story and 
then when I see the one in the book I'm disappointed." And these 

154 




WELTSCHMERZ 



NEW YEAR 

King Arthur pictiires are rarely good in execution. It just shows that 
one need not attempt to pahn o£f unimaginative stuff, much less trash, 
on children. The greatest artists are none too good to make the 
drawings for children's books. Imagination and romance in pictures 
and stories a child asks for above all, and those qualities in illustra- 
tion are the rarest. 

Monday, January thirteenth. 

Of the three days that have again passed two have been quite 
fair enough for Olson to have come. Both yesterday and to-day 
Rockwell and I made frequent trips down the shore to look for 
him. It is terribly depressing to have your heart set upon that 
mail that doesn't come. I begin to think that some other cause 
than the weather holds Olson away. It is possible that the steamer 
we saw going to Seward was no mail steamer, and that Olson, 
who has gone for his pension money, is waiting for a mail. I feel 
like making no record of these days. I take pleasure only in their 
quick passage. 

Saturday night Rockwell received the order of knighthood. For 
three quarters of an hour he stayed upon his knees watching over his 
arms. He was all that time as motionless as stone and as silent. 
Now he is Sir Lancelot of the Lake and jousts all day with imaginary 
giants and wicked knights. He has rescued one queen for himself 
but as yet none for me. 

We have run about some on our snowshoes, though the snow is 
nowhere deep enough for that except along the shore. The weather 
is still mild — hardly freezing at all — and it forever successively 
rains, snows, and hails. All the animals are still alive. I don't 
love them, they're rather a nuisance. Nothing could be less 
amusing than a blue fox, — small creatures, excessively timid, of 
cowed demeanor. Saturday I had to get a bag of fish from the 

157 



WILDERNESS 

lake where they had been soaking and cook up another great sup- 
ply of fox food. 

Wednesday, January fifteenth. 

Yesterday to begin with a snowstorm and then a clear, gray day. 
To-day blue sky in the morning, a north wind and bitter cold ; gray 
again at noon and mild. By the geological survey report of Kenai 
Peninsular, January should average in temperature at Seward six- 
teen degrees. From now on it must average close to zero to give us 
sixteen for the month. Here it's not as cold as New York. Rockwell 
bathed to-night standing within six feet of the open door. I have 
definitely decided that Olson stays for some cause other than the 
weather, although to-day and yesterday he could not have come. 
We snowshoed a bit to-day. Alaska snowshoes are certainly the 
easiest that ever were to travel on. 

Thursday, January sixteenth. 

Well, after to-day there remains no doubt that Olson stays away 
purposely — unless he's sick or dead. Rockwell's theory that Seward 
has been totally swept away by a terrible fire, with every man, woman, 
and child of its inhabitants, I disproved to-night. We walked down 
the beach and there were the lights of the great city brighter it seemed 
than ever. Either there has been no mail boat at all since early in 
December or there has been no mail from Juneau whence Olson's 
"check-que," as he calls it, comes. Well it profits us nothing to 
speculate on this. 

The day has been glorious, mild, fair, with snow everjrwhere even 
on the trees. The snow sticks to the mountain tops even to the 
steepest, barest peaks painting them all a spotless, dazzling white. 
It's a marvelous sight. Rockwell and I journeyed around the point 
to-day and saw the sun again. To-night in the brilliant moonlight 

158 




VICTORY 



NEW YEAR 

I snowshoed around the cove. There never was so beautiful a land 
as this ! Now at midnight the moon is overhead. Our clearing seems 
as bright as day, — and the shadows are so dark! From the little 
window the lamplight shines out through the fringe of icicles along 
the eaves, and they glisten like diamonds. And in the still air the 
smoke ascends straight up into the blue night sky. 

Saturday, January eighteenth. 

Two beautiful days, these last. And to-night the wind blows and 
the snow falls and it is very cold. The days are uneventful. We 
journey many times down the beach over our snowshoe trail. That's 
our out-of-doors diversion, — to look up the bay toward Seward. But 
the view is beautiful. Loftier mountains, more volcano shaped are 
about Seward, and they're dazzling white. 

Yesterday Rockwell found otter tracks crossing from the salt 
water to the lake, — a lot of them. It's wonderful to think that those 
fine creatures have crossed the five long miles of water. Their foot- 
prints are as large as a good-sized dog's. They seem to have a great 
time frisking about as they travel. On one little slope they have 
made a slide. No footprints are there at all, — only the smoothly 
worn track. We see no wild life as a rule but the eagles. They're all 
about in plenty, magnificent birds when seen close to, and when flying 
at the moimtain's height still surprisingly large. 

The milk goat is dry, — so that's one chore less. Rockwell feeds 
the goats every day, but I can't trust him with the foxes; he'd leave 
the door open as likely as not. (It was reserved for Olson himself to 
let this happen. May twenty-ninth he writes in a letter to me : 

" Had a skear or acksedent on the eighteenth, i vas putteng som grase in 
to the fox Corrals an i most heav left the hok of van i turnd around the dor vas 
open and i. fox goan the litle femall in the Corall naxst to the goat Hous. And 
the fox var over at the tant i cald to em et vas suppertam to Com bake and get 

i6i 



WILDERNESS 

Bom sepper aad He sat down and luckt at me bot finly mosed of op in the Hill. 
i take the other fox and put em in the other Corall and left the 2— tow Coralls 
open and put feed in the seam es nothing ad apen. the first night i did not 
sleep vary val. the sakond night and not showing up, bot naxst morning i Came 
out to the Corall the feed vas goin en the pan and the fox vas sleping on the 
box var he allves du and i felt a litle Beatter van the doors ar shut.") 




I'm hard at work painting by day and drawing at night. Twenty- 
five good drawings are done. On the fair, warm days Rockwell spends 
most of his time out-of-doors. Being Sir Lancelot still delights him 
and there's not a stump in the vicinity that has not been scarred by 
his attacks with lance and sword. These stumps are really mostly 
all giants. I am now reading the Department of Agriculture year 
book. It's very instructive. 

162 



NEW YEAR 

Tuesday, January twenty-first 

The north wind rages to-night. It is cold and clear starlight. 
With the violent wind-gusts the snow sweeps by in clouds — sweeps 
by except for what sweeps tn. Over my work table it descends in a 
fine, wet spray so that I've had to cover that place with canvas and 
work elsewhere. A wild day it has been and a wild night is before us. 
And yesterday was little brother to it. 

These days are wonderful but they are terrible. It is thrilling now 
with Olson absent to refiect that we are absolutely cut off from all 
mankind, that we cannot, in this raging sea, return to the world nor 
the world come to us. Barriers must secure your isolation in order 
that you may experience the full significance of it. The romance of 
an adventxu-e hangs upon slender threads. A banana peeling on a 
mountain top tames the wilderness. Much of the glory of this Alaska 
is in the knowledge I have that the next bay — which I may never 
choose to enter — is uninhabited, that beyond those mountains across 
the water is a vast region that no man has ever trodden, a terrible 
ice-bound wilderness. 

We begin to think less of Olson's return. I have settled to my 
work and can imagine things continuing as they are for weeks. They 
will continue so unless the wind forsakes the north. Two days ago 
after a very cold night we awoke to thunder and lightning — and snow 1 
In two hours the sun was out. That afternoon I stripped and danced 
awhile in the snow — a little while. Then, after a hot bath, out again 
in my nakedness for a roll in the snow, dressed, — and felt a new man. 
Rockwell loves it all more and more. He seems absolutely contented 
and spends hours a day outdoors. 

What a marvel is a child's imagination ! It is a treat for Rockwell 
to play " man-eater " at bedtime and attack me furiously. And if at 
any time I'll just enter his pretend-world it's all he can wish for. 
Another filthy mess of fox-food has been prepared and a new sack of 

163 



WILDERNESS 

salt fish put to soak in the lake. I do hate that chore. Pioneering I 
relish; ranching I despise, at least blue fox ranching. The miserable 
things slink about so in such sick and mean spirited fashion. 

Thursday, January twenty-third. 

Sometimes the smoke goes up the flue— and sometimes down. 
And that's not good for the fire. I sit within six inches of the stove 
with a frozen nose and icy feet. The wind sifts through the walls. 
Now, with our moss calking shrunken and dried and shriveled 
further with the cold, our cabin would be light without windows. 
These are so far the coldest days of winter. Although it blows 
straight from the north, whence only fair weather comes, the day is 
dark with drifting snow cloud high. The water of the bay is hidden 
in driving vapor. We cut wood and stuff it everlastingly into the 
stove. To-day seventy pieces for the ravenous air-tight, big chunks, 
have been cut and split — and we'll cut again to-morrow. But with all 
the trouble of cold weather we'd be mightily disappointed if the winter 
slipped by without it. 

It's a real satisfaction to find that my calculations in suppUes, in 
bedding, in heating equipment were just right for conditions here. 
We're running low now in cereals and milk but we had plaimed to 
visit Seward this month to restock. Olson's absence is quite outside 
of all plans. If he isn't sick it's hard to explain reasonably in any way. 

For the past three weeks I have made on an average no less than 
one good drawing a day, really drawings I'm delighted with. I've 
struck a fine stride and moreover a good system for my work here to 
continue upon. During the day I paint out-of-doors from nature by 
way of fixing the forms and above all the color of the out-of-doors in 
my mind. Then after dark I go into a trance for a while with Rockwell 
subdued into absolute silence. I lie down or sit with closed eyes 
until I " see " a composition, — then I make a quick note of it or may- 

164 




ZARATHUSTRA AND HIS PLAYMATES 



NEW YEAR 

be give an hour's time to perfecting the arrangement on a small scale. 
Then when that's done I'm care free. Rockwell and I play cards for 
half an hour, I get supper, he goes to bed. When he's naked I get him 
to pose for me in some needed fantastic position, and make a note of 
the anatomy in the gestitfe of my contemplated drawing. Little Rock- 
well's tender form is my model perhaps for some huge, hairy ruffian. 
It's a great joke how I use him. Generally I have to feel for the bone 
or tendon that I want to place correctly. 

Last night I drew laughing to myself. A lion was my subject. I 
have often envied Blake and some of the old masters their ignorance 
of certain forms that let them be at times so delightfully, impressively 
naive. I've thought it matters not a bit how little you know about the 
living form provided you proceed to draw the thing according to some 
definite, consistent idea. Don't conceal your ignorance with a slur, 
be definite and precise even there. Well, by golly, this lion gave me 
my chance to be unsophisticated; such a silly, smirking beast as I 
drew! At last it became somewhat rational and a little dignified, 
but it still looks like a judge in a great wig. But a lion that lets a 
naked youth sleep in his paws as this one does may be expected to be 
a little imbeastly. When I began to write these pages to-night the 
stars were out. Now it snows or hails on the roof! 

Saturday, January twenty-fifth. 
It is bitterly cold weather, as cold continuously as I've ever ex- 
perienced. Both yesterday and to-day the wind has been excep- 
tionally violent and the air full of flying snow. Both of Olson's water 
barrels — in the house — have frozen solid. One bulged and bm-st 
the bottom rolling itself off onto the fioor. 

Sunday, January twenty-sixth. 
A day of hard work with Rockwell in bed for a change. Just a 
little stomach upset — and he's all right now. Felled a tree and cut 

167 



WILDERNESS 

up fifteen feet of it, taking advantage of this glorious day. It was much 
milder than for days it has been and it still holds so to-night. There's 
no wind and that makes ever so much difference in the cabin. Now 
if it will hold calm and mild for a day we'll see whether or not Olson 
is yet ready to return. 

Tuesday, January twenty-eighth. 

I'm reading "Zarathustra," "Write with blood, and thou wilt 
learn that blood is spirit." So that book was written. Last night I 
made a drawing of Zarathustra leading the ugliest man by the hand 
out into the night to behold the round moon and the silver water- 
fall. What a book to illustrate! The translator of it says that 
Zarathustra is such a being as Nietzsche would have Uked him- 
self to be, — in other words his ideal man. It seems to me that 
the ideal of a man is the real man. You are that which in your 
soul you choose to be; your most beautiful and cherished vision 
is yourself. What are the true, normal conditions of life for any 
man but just those perfect conditions with which he would ideally 
surround himself. A man is not a sum of discordant tenden- 
cies — ^but rather a being perfect for one special place; and this is 
Olson's creed. 

My chief criticism of Zarathustra is his taste for propagan- 
da. Why, after all, concern himself with the mob. In picturing 
his hero as a teacher has not Nietzsche been tricked away from 
a true ideal to an historical one? Of necessity the great selfish 
figures of all time have gone down to oblivion. It's the will of 
human society that only the benefactors of mankind shall be 
cherished in memory. A pure ideal is to be the thing yourself, 
concerning yourself no bit with proving it. And if the onward 
path of mankind seems to go another way than yours — proud soul, 
let it. 

i68 




FROZEN FALL 



NEW YEAR 

Wednesday, January twenty-ninth. 

Alaska can be cold I Monday broke all records for the winter. 
Tuesday made that seem balmy. It was so bitterly cold here last 
night in our "tight little cabin" that we had to laugh. Until ten 
o'clock when I went to bed the large stove was continuously red hot 
and r unn ing at full blast. And yet by then the water pails were 
frozen two inches thick — but ten feet from the stove and open water 
at supper time, my fountain pen was frozen on the table, Rockwell 
required a hot water bottle in bed, the fox food was solid ice, my paste 
was frozen, and that's all. My potatoes and milk I had stood near the 
stove. At twelve o'clock the clock stopped — starting again from the 
warmth of breakfast cooking. I put the water pail at night behind 
the stove close to it, and yet it was solid in the morning. We bum an 
unbehevable amount of wood, at least a cord a week in one stove. 
So I figure we earn a dollar a day cutting wood. We felled another 
tree to-day and cut most of it up. Still we manage to gain steadily with 
our wood pile always in anticipation of worse weather. Last night at 
sundown the bay appeared indescribably dramatic. Dense clouds 
of vapor were rising from the water obscuring all but a few peaks of 
the mountains and darkening the bay. But above the sun shone 
dazzlingly on the peaks and through the thinner vapor, coloring this 
like flames. It was as if a terrible fire raged over the bay. This 
morning for hours it was dark from clouds of vapor. They swept in 
over our land and coated the trees of the shore with white frost. 

Yesterday I had to go to the lake and chop out a bag of fish for the 
foxes. I returned covered with ice and the fish were frozen solid 
before I reached the cabin. I cut them up to-day with the axe and 
cooked a week's supply of food for the foxes. 

Rockwell has been a trump. The weather can't be too cold for 
him. This morning he pulled his end of the saw without rest. He 
rarely goes out now without his horse, lance, and sword and he ad- 

171 



WILDERNESS 

dresses me always as " My lord." Surely Lancelot himself was no 
gentler knight. And now it's bedtime. The cold is less than last 
night but still I sit huddled at the stove. It is the bitter wind that 
makes the trouble. 

Thursday, January thirtieth. 

A Splendid day of wood cutting. It was milder and quite windless 
in our cove, although in the bay there were whitecaps. A light snow 
had begun to fall by noon and it continues. To increase our lead on 
the weather we set to work upon a twenty-eight inch tree. We had to 
throw it somewhat against its natural lean and it was a terrible job. 
The wedge would not enter the frozen tree and when it at last did it 
wouldn't lift the great mass that rested on it. Only after an hour's 
continuous pounding with the heavy sledge-hammer did I drive the 
wedge in clear to the head, and then the great tree fell. The fall of 
one of these monsters — for to us they seem gigantic — is thrilling. 
This one went straight where we had aimed it, down a narrow avenue 
in the woods. Ripping and crashing it fell carrying down a smaller 
tree with its limbs. Then Rockwell and I set to work with the saw. 
When the drums were split we hauled them to the cabin on Olson's 
Yukon sled. And now our wood pile is a joyous sight, while within 
the cabin we have a whole, cold day's supply. 

Last night just as I was going to bed Rockwell began to talk in his 
sleep about some wild adventure with his imaginary savages. I asked 
him if he were cold. "No, my lord," he murmured and slept on. 
Very fine barley soup to-day. Water in which barley had been boiled, 
two bouillon cubes, onions browned in bacon fat. Rockwell said it 
was the best yet. 

Saturday, February first. 
Again the days are like spring. Yesterday began the thaw and to- 
day continues it with rain most of the time. So we've stayed within 

172 




THE HERMIT 



NEW YEAR 

doors, Sir Lancelot and my lordship working here at our craft. I have 
just completed my second drawing for the day. One a day has been 
the rate for a month — but yesterday the spirit didn't work. But the 
news! A great, old tramp steamer entered yesterday. That must 
carry mail and freight and send Olson back to us. If only it were a 
regular liner I'd know for sure. It is possible this steamer has been 
chartered to relieve the situation. Well — the next fair, calm day will 
show. 

Sunday, February second. 

It's before supper. Rockwell, who has just run out-of-doors for a 
romp, calls at this moment that he has lost his slipper in the snow and 
is barefooted. Out-of-doors is to us like another room. Mornings 
we wash in the snow, invariably. And with a mug of water in hand 
clean oiir teeth out there — and this in the coldest weather. We scour 
our pots with snow before washing them, throw the dish water right 
out of the door, and generally are in and out all day. ... It is surely 
nonsense to think that changes of temperature give men colds. 
Neither of us has had a trace of a cold this winter, we haven't even 
used handkerchiefs — only sleeves. Nor does it give one a cold to be 
cold. I've tried that often enough to know. And a variable climate 
has, too, nothing to do with it, for what variableness could exceed 
an Alaska winter. Colds, like bad temper and loss of faith, are a 
malady of the city crowd. 

It rains — this moment, the next it will hail — and then snow. 
Sometime to-day the sun has shone, sometime the wind has blown, 
and for the rest been calm. Altogether it has been too uncertain for 
us to expect Olson. And now for the sour-dough hot cakes and 
supper. For Rockwell, barley, " the marrow of men." 

Rockwell to-day asked me how kings earned their living. I said 
they didn't earn it — just got the people to give it to them. 

175 



WILDERNESS 

"What's that," he said laughing, "some sort of a joke they play 
on the people? " 

So I guess it takes education to appreciate privilege. Incidentally, 
the war must be over and the heroes, having proved by their might 
that might does not make right — or that it does? ( !) now have doffed 
the soldier's uniform of glory for the little-honored clothes of toil 

Monday, February third. 

We are in the second month of Olson's absence. To-day it 
stormed mostly ; heavy snow in the morning. Through the thick of it 
we heard faintly a steamer whistle. It seemed to be receding, out- 
ward bound. At four o'clock while a light snow fell the lightning 
played merrily and thunder crashed. It is like this : snow for half an 
hour, then rain — silence and calm for a few minutes. Suddenly huge 
hailstones pelt the roof, for all the world like rocks. This lasts a few 
seconds, there's a fierce gust of wind showering ice and snow from 
the tree tops down upon us, again calm and silence — and the per- 
formance is ready to begin again. 

Tuesday, February fourth. 

It has been so changeable to-day that we are still uncertain of 
Olson's intentions. We snowshoed down the beach in the beautiful, 
soft, new snow so at least to have a look toward Seward. There lay 
the bay calm and beautiful — and spotless. The scale of things is so 
tremendous here that I've little idea how far we shall be able to see 
the little, bobbing boat when it does come. 

We sawed a lot of wood to-day bringing our pile clear up into the 
gable peak. It becomes a mania seeing the pile grow. In quiet 
weather we cut to forestall the storm ; in the storm we still cut to be 
well ahead for days that may be worse. It is beautifully mild now. 
■On February first Rockwell brought in some budding twigs. The 

176 




ECSTASY 



NEW YEAR 

alders all seem to be in bud and some charming, red-stemmed shrubs 
as well. It is midnight and past. My drawing is finished, the stove is 
piled for the night, cereal and beans in place upon it, so — Good-night. 

Wednesday, February fifth. 

A beautiful snowstorm all the day and to-night, still and mild. 
Rockwell has been out in it all day dressed in my overalls and mittens. 
He plays seal and swims in the deep snow. We built a snow house 
together. It is now about seven feet in diameter inside and as cozy 
as can be. I'm sure Rockwell will want to sleep there when it's 
finished. A curtain of icicles hangs before our little window. 

I have carefully figured the cost of our living here from the food 
bills, all of which I have kept. I have bought $i 14.82 worth of pro- 
visions. I still have on hand $19. 10 worth. For one hundred and fifty 
days it has cost us sixty-four cents a day for two, or thirty-two cents 
each, — a Httle over ten cents a meal. This for the current high prices 
everywhere and additionally high in Alaska seems very reasonable 
living. The figures include the very expensive Christmas luxuries. 

Friday, February seventh. 

Yesterday, THE SUN ! For how many days he might have been 
shining at us I don't know, for it has been cloudy. However at noon 
it was all over the ground about us and shining in at my window. 
What a joyous sight after months of shadow ! To-night the sun at set- 
ting again almost reached us. And yesterday as if spring had already 
come we begin the day with snow baths at sunrise. Ha ! That's the 
real morning bath! And to-day again. We step out-of-doors and 
plunge full length into the deep snow, scour our bodies with it, and 
rush back into the sheltering house and the red-hot stove. To Rock- 
well belongs all credit, or blame, for this madness. He will do it — 
and I'm ashamed not to follow. These two days have been cold and 

179 



WILDERNESS 

windy, north days, — but how beautiful! All of the day Rockwell 
plays out-of-doors swimming in the deep snow, now a seal, again a 
walrus. Gee, he's the great fellow for northern weather. Cooked 
the filthy fox mess yesterday, washed clothes to-day, sawed wood on 
both. Now it's twelve-thirty at night and I'm tired. 

Saturday, February eighth. 

All about me stand the drawings of my series, the *' Mad Hermit." 
They look mighty fine to me. Myself with whiskers and hair ! First, 
to-day, when the storm abated a bit, we sank a bag of fish in the lake 
and then started on snowshoes for the ridge to the eastward. The 
snow lay in the woods there heavy and deep. No breath of wind had 
touched it. The small trees, loaded, bent double making shapes like 
frozen fountains. Some little trees with their branches starting far 
from the ground formed with their drooping limbs domed chambers 
about their stems. Coming down it was great sport. We could slide 
down even in our sticky snowshoes. Rockwell, who was soaked 
through, undressed and spent the afternoon naked, playing wild 
animal about the cabin. Then at six-thirty we both had hot baths, 
and snow baths following. I begin to relish the snow bath. Rockwell 
was the picture of health and beauty afterwards with his rose-red 
cheeks and blue eyes. 

Monday, February tenth. 

Yesterday morning I bathed in a snowstorm, this morning it was 
too terribly, howlingly blusterous to run out into it. And now since 
one o'clock it is as calm and mild as it ever could be. Within the 
cabin it's even more cozy than usual. The snow is banked up against 
the big window to a third the window's height. By day the light seems 
curtained, by night doubly bright from reflected lamplight. Heavy 
drifts are everywhere. Last night fine snow filtered in upon our faces 

1 80 



NEW YEAR 

as we slept but not enough to be uncomfortable. The cabin is for- 
tunately placed as to drifts and our door-yard remains clear with a 
splendid bathing bank skirting it. Rockwell is at work now upon 
multiplication tables. He's a real student and is always seriously 
occupied with something in his hours indoors. 



i8i 




CHAPTER X 



OLSON! 

^m E returned last night, the eleventh of February, in a 

^B^k blaze of glory! Ah, the wonder of it and of all he 

^ ■ ■ brought. Rockwell and I sat at our cards just before 

I 9 M supper-time. The day, a calm one, a fair one, had 

^^^ ^^ passed and Olson again had not come. We were 

downcast. Every possible cause for his continued 

absence had been reviewed in my mind. To wait longer was 

not to be endured. And so we sat with far-ofif thoughts and toyed 

with the silly cards. Suddenly the long, clear sound of a boat's 

horn reached us from the night outdoors. We ran and peered 

into the darkness. At last we saw a black spot moving far out 

on the water. Oh Godl it was entering the cove. In what a 

frenzy of excitement we hurried down the beach! Nearer they 

come and nearer, men's voices, the little cabin light, and the vessel 

gliding toward us ; they're abreast of us, they drop anchor. " Olson, 

Olson," I shout, "Olson, is that you?" "He's aboard," is an- 

182 



OLSON! 

swered, " How are you, and how's the little boy? " We see them 
loading a dory from the vessel's deck, — and now they row it to the 
shore. It's good to see a fine young fisherman and shake his hand. 
Again and once again the loads are ferried in and carried up the 
long and slippery low-tide beach. Rockwell has lighted Olson's 
lamp, he sweeps his cabin, and starts the fire in the stove. At the last 
load I slip aboard the vessel. lam "wanted." There stands Olson 
swaying gigantic on the deck above us as we bump the side. A bear's 
greeting ! Olson is radiant, radiant and mellow with the joy of home- 
coming and the warmth of tasted spirits. The skipper I know, yes ! 
the good Englishman, Hogg, who had us once to dinner at his camp. 
Down in the cabin in the heat and fumes of a cooking feast we tip the 
friendly bottle. 

Ah ! tell me not, abstainer, of any glories you have known. One 
night, one midnight out on the black waters of a Newfoundland harbor, 
the million stars above, and on the wretched vessel's deck the hoard 
of half-drunk, soul-starved men saying their passionate farewells, — 
on the dull plain of their life a flash of lightning revealing an abyss ; — 
this night on the still, dark cove of Resurrection Bay, rimmed with 
wild mountains and the wilderness, strong men about you, mad, 
loosened speech and winged, prophetic vision, — God ! but sane day- 
light seeing seems to touch but the white, hard surface of where life is 
hidden. 

From the hot cabin I climbed the boat's ladder, up, up onto the 
world's heights. Ah, how the cold, clean wind from the wide spaces 
then swept my soul, and how close about my head the dome of heaven 
and the stars ! This is no earth-ship but the deck of a meteor vessel 
that I tread, the moon ship of the ancient northern gods. 

I row ashore for Rockwell, stow the goods higher on the beach, 
and we return aboard for supper. Over Rockwell the skipper makes a 
great fuss, says he's a famous oarsman and could beat his daddy, a 

183 



WILDERNESS 

fine, big, strong boy. Warm hearted skipper ! — and he reaches again 
for the bottle and I drink. It's vinegar! Profuse apologies, and the 
right one is found. 

We eat, we stuff !— and then the three of us, Rockwell laden with 
presents of fruit, say good-night and row ashore. Poor, tired Olson 
has little strength to move the heavy loads from the beach. No matter, 
I struggle alone and finally stow them in his cabin, a great pile. Then 
a cup of coffee with the old man, a little furious talk about the war, — 
fury at a world that could mess things so, — and home to bed where 
already Rockwell slept. 

This morning the icy bath. Then without breakfast we began 
upon our mail. What a wonderful Christmas at last I The bed was 
piled high with presents, the table high with letters. We sorted and 
gloated like hungry tigers that in the ecstasy of possession merely 
lick their food. All through the morning and deep into the afternoon 
I read the mail. Unwashed dishes stood about, for meals we but 
ate what was at hand. (Here follows in the journal a list two pages 
long of presents, of books — what a shelf of them! — woolen clothes 
and sheepskin slippers, music for the flute, plum-pudding, candy, 
chocolate, cigarettes, — and ever so much more.) And that being 
about seven times as much as we've ever had before is all. Ah, in 
the wilderness you love your friends and they too think of you. Better 
than all, though, are the letters; such friendly letters never were 
before. 

Friday, February fourteenth. 

The days go like the wind. So warm to-day and yesterday 1 We 
live out-of-doors. Now as I write the door stands open and the soft, 
moist, spring air enters to dispel the fumes of turpentine. I primed 
eight canvases to-day, six of which I had also stretched. This 
afternoon I painted at the northern end of the beach almost be- 

184 




X 



PELAGIC REVERIE 



OLSON! 

neath a frozen waterfall, an emerald of huge size and wonderful 
form. 

Rockwell is in high spirits. I think the augmentation of our diet 
brought by Olson's return will do him a lot of good. We had cut down 
on our use of milk to a can in two or three days. Now we may live on 
fish which Olson has in such quantities that we're to help ourselves. 
Olson has insisted on my accepting a fifty-pound sack of flour for my 
services during his six weeks' absence, and I expect to find it hard to 
be allowed to return the cereals that I am borrowing. What a con- 
trast this free-handed country to the mean spirit of Newfoundland ! 

Monday, February seventeenth. 

Three days ! and what has happened? I guess that on the first of 
them I stretched and painted canvas. On the second all day I painted 
out-of-doors, it was quite summer-like and the sun shone through dia- 
mond-dripping trees. And to-day I have written from early morning 
before breakfast until now, eleven at night. I have decided to go to 
Seward in a few days. It has become necessary to go back to New 
York very soon. I told Rockwell of this to-day and his eyes have 
scarcely been dry since. He has reasoned with me and inquired into 
every detail of the situation. He doesn't want to go to New York 
nor even to live in the country in the East. There'll be no ocean 
near nor any warm pond for bathing. And not even the thought that 
elsewhere he'd have playmates weighs against his love for this spot. 

You should see Sir Lancelot now. His clothes are outgrown and 
outworn. They hang in tatters about him. His trousers are burst 
from the knee to the hip, his overalls that cover them are rags. His 
shirt is buttonless but for two in front. From above tattered elbows 
his sleeves hang in ribbons. His hair is long and shaggy; where it 
hung over his eyes I have cut it off short. But, his fair cheeks are as 
pink as roses, his eyes are beautiful and blue, his lips are red, and his 

187 



WILDERNESS 

face glows always with expression. So we don't care a rap for the 
rest — only Rockwell does ! One day after he had regarded for a long 
time a certain unfortunate photograph of himself in which he looked 
like an idiot, he said, " Father, I'd like to dress up some day and put 
on my best clothes and brush my hair, — because I want to see if I 
really look like I do in this picture." Rockwell loves to look well and 
it's a real treat for him to dress up. So, that being the case and his 
tidy nature being so well assured I don't trouble a bit to adorn him. 
He cleans his teeth regularly and likes to do it. Mornings we get 
up together and go through a set of Dr. Sargent's exercises, do them 
with great energy. Then we go naked out-of-doors. The period of 
chattering teeth is past. No matter what the weather is we go calmly 
out into it, lie down in the drift, look up into the sky, and then scrub 
ourselves with snow. It's the finest bath in the world. 

It rains to-day — or snows. The snow lies three feet deep on the 
level. At our windows it is above the sills. In Seward, — have I 
written this before? — it lies so deep that one can't see across the 
street. The snow is the deepest, and that last cold snap the coldest, 
of any winter remembered or recorded. The cold was very many 
degrees below zero. So we have experienced a true winter. We're 
so glad to know it. 

Tuesday, February eighteenth. 

Such mild weather ! With the fire nearly out it's hot indoors to- 
night. A little snow, a little rain, but altogether a pleasant day. It's 
always pleasant when I paint well. To-day I redeemed two straying 
pictures and they're among the elect now. To-night a steamer en- 
tered from the westward, the Curacao, long expected. She must 
have been here two or three days ago and since then been to Seldovia. 
With incredible slowness she crept over the water. What old hulks 
they do put onto this Alaska service. 

i88 




PRISON BARS 



OLSON! 

Rockwell's mothering of all things exceeded reason to-day. He 
put two sticks of wood on the fire after I had intended it to go out. 
I removed them, blazing merrily. " Don't " cried RockweU seriously, 
" you'll hurt the fire's feelings. " 

Rockwell cleared off the boat to-day. Next we must dig her out. 
To-morrow the engine must be put in order. We must find a hole in 
the gasoline tank and solder it and then coax it into starting. It is on 
such jobs that whole precious days are wasted. 

Rockwell loves every foot of this spot of land. To-night he spoke 
of the beauties of the lake, its steep wooded shores, clean and pebbly, 
and the one low, clear, and level spot where we approached the water. 
He had planned to live this summer the day long on the shores of the 
lake, naked, playing in and out of the water or paddUng some craft 
about. I thought of putting up a tent in some mossy deU along the 
shore and letting Rockwell sleep there nights alone and learn early 
the wonders of a hermit's life. And none of it is to be ! 

Wednesday, February nineteenth. 

It rains and storms. But to-day we repaired the engine and we're 
ready to start for Seward when it clears. Above every other thought 
now is the sad reaUzation that our days on this beloved island are 
nearing an end. What is it that endears it so to a man near forty and 
a little boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. 
It may be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning 
backward from the crowded world that I have known and learned to 
fear, meet Rockwell in his forward march from nothing— to this. 
If that be so we have met only for a moment for such perfect sym- 
pathy. His love will pass on from this and mine will grow dissatisfied 
and wander stiU. But I think it's otherwise. It seems that we have 
both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and 
come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing 

191 



WILDERNESS 

which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES— 
for the wilderness is nothing else. It is a kind of living mirror that 
gives back as its own all and only all that the imagination of a man 
brings to it. It is that which we believe it to be. So here we have 
stood, we two, and if we have not shuddered at the emptiness of the 
abyss and fled from its loneliness, it is because of the wealth of our 
own souls that filled the void with imagery, warmed it, and gave it 
speech and understanding. This vast, wild land we have made a 
child's world and a man's. 

I know nothing in all Ufe more beautiful than the perfect 
belief of Rockwell in his Paradise here. Unopposed, his romance 
has kindled every object on the homestead ; so that now for hours 
he can steal about in the forest, on the beach, along the lake, — 
in absolute contentment, for it is wonderland itself. The "King's 
road," the "Giant's path" where stand the gummy "ten-pound 
butter tree" and all the giants with whom Sir Lancelot must joust, 
the magpie's grave marked with a cross, the otter's cave, the marvel- 
ous frozen stream; those strange wild people, the Treaps, who visit 
these shores occasionally to hunt the white man for his skin as the 
white man has hunted their dear animals ; rain-bears and wild-cat- 
eaters — appalling animals that inhabit the dark woods but are good 
friends to Rockwell. Every log and rotten stimip, the gnarled trees, 
with or without "butter," every mound and path, the rocks, the 
streams, each is a being in itself ; and with those most living goats, and 
the brilliant magpies, the pretty, little, dingy sparrows, the glorious 
and virtuous porcupines, the black, black crows, the great and noble 
eagle, the rare spider and the rarer fly, and the wonderful, strong, 
sleek otters that leap in sport through the snow and coast down-hill, 
they make a world of romance that has thrilled one little boy to 
the very bottom of his soul. To live here, to accumulate about him 
more and more animals and shelter them from harm, to live forever 

192 




RUNNING WATER 



OLSON! 

or, if he must, grow old, and very old ; here marry — not a Seward 
girl but one more beautiful — or an Indian ! — here raise a great family 
— and here die. That now is the ideal of little Rockwell. And if we, 
his family, all of us, would coimt we must come here to him where 
with patriarchal magnificence and dignity he will care for us. 

Thiirsday, February twentieth. 

All day out-of-doors, both of us. In the morning Rockwell and I 
journeyed around the point between the two coves of the island. It's 
a rocky promontory with a great jumble of bowlders at its base that 
one must scramble over. These are generally wet and slippery and 
not much fun. However we went well around and I set up my canvas 
and painted while Rockwell crawled about in caves and crevasses 
playing some sort of wild beast. The wind rose as I finished and made 
it difficult to convey my wet canvas without damaging it. And in the 
afternoon again I painted on two pictures out-of-doors. That's to 
be my work now till the time I go. To-morrow if the day is right we 
start for Seward. Our boat is dug out of the snow, our goods are 
packed, the engine chafes at the throttle. I am tired to-night and it is 
bedtime. 

Sunday, February twenty-third. 

Friday was calm. We left the island at about eleven — after the 
usual hours fussing with the engine. At Hogg's camp we called in 
for something to bale with, for the boat, being leaky, had taken in a lot 
of water. No one at home — so I stole a bowl from the shed and we 
proceeded. By then the sun shone upon us and we could observe, 
what we later confirmed at Seward, that the sun shines at the head 
of the bay while the island, our island, is shrouded in clouds. Quite 
different conditions prevail in the two localities. With us it is warmer 
and much wetter. The recorded rainfall for Seward, that some time 

195 



WILDERNESS 

ago seemed incredibly small, does not fit Fox Island at all. Olson's 
records for last summer show prevailing rainy weather — and Seward 
rejoiced in unprecedented sunshine ! And during these three days 
in Seward now, days wonderfully fair, thick clouds have always been 
over Fox Island. And even the wind blows there when Seward's 
waters are calm. 

And so on Friday we reached Seward with flying colors, stowed our 
boat up high, put the engine into Olson's cabin, and walked again the 
streets of civilization. Here everyone is friendly. The first night 
Rockwell dined out at one house and slept at another with a lot of 
children. What must they have thought of his underclothes ! I went 
supperless — writing letters instead. And then flute music at the 
postmaster's. Next day very early the steamer came and the day 
passed for me in the wild excitement of receiving mail. 

Wednesday, February twenty-sixth. 

Yesterday we came home ! We left Seward with only a light load 
aboard. It blew briskly in the bay from the north. Before we 
reached Caine's Head there was a splendid, white-crested chop racing 
along with us. Midway across it was about all the engine could have 
stood. The propeller is not set at enough depth in our boat and in 
yesterday's sea it was most of the time out of water, racing at a furious 
pace. Then the boat would naturally lose steerage way and we'd 
swing far out of our course. But it was great sport. Into it we could 
have made no headway; before it nothing could stop us. And the 
engine kept right on going ! — only as usual it was continually falling 
apart. On Friday the flywheel came loose six times, the muffler four, 
and the valve spring fell off and stayed off. Coming back all went well 
till we were in the roughest sea; then the muffler came loose. Not 
wanting to stop the engine in that sea I spent half the time on my 
knees holding the tiller in one hand and the muffler nut with a pair 

196 




IMMANENCE 



OLSONl 

of pliers in the other. Rockwell bailed most of the time. The boat 
leaks like a sieve. 

And how fine to get home again ! Only an hour and we were again 
seated at dinner in our warm cabin. Rockwell said it was hard for 
him to remember whether Mr. Olson or we had just been to Seward. 
I brought Olson a battery boz and batteries as a present. He was 
much pleased. But particularly his mail pleased him. I saw him soon 
after our arrival seated with his spectacles on studying his letters. 
He rarely gets any. This time came a post-card and letter from 
Rockwell's mother. 

The day passed and evening came. Then appeared entering our 
cove a cabined gasoUne boat. Two young fellows came ashore and 
we all chatted in Olson's cabin. One had tiis wife aboard. They 
claimed to be hunting a stray boat, — but Olson whispered to me later, 
dramatically, that they were doubtless out dragging somewhere for 
a cache of whiskey. Lots of whiskey has been sunk in the bay. 
Marks were taken at the time to determine its location and now the 
owners as need arises fish up what they want. It's just like the buried 
treasure of the days of piracy. Doubtiess there are now many charts 
extant with the position of liquid treasure marked upon them. 

To-day has been again overcast but beautifully mild. It is really 
a wonderful climate. Rockwell makes the most of these last days. 
He went this morning to the ridge's top east of us, and this afternoon 
high up on the mountain side. He now wants to stay here and become 
a wild man. There is no question in my mind about his entire willing- 
ness, his desire, to be left here when I go. 



199 




CHAPTER XI 



TWILIGHT 

^^^^^^^HE first of March! If only the dull weather would 

M^^^ clear up I could get more done these last days here. 

^ Fifteen brand-new canvases hang from my ridge pole 

^^^^ waiting for pictures to adorn them. To-day is the 

only day that work out-of-doors has been quite out of 

the question. It snows hard. Last Thursday morning Rockwell and I 

began to take our morning baths in the bay — the snow having become 

too hard. And now at just seven-fifteen — on cloudy mornings, 

clothed in sneakers we scamper down the shore and plunge into the 

waves. Brrrrrrrr ! it's cold, but mighty good. Olson, after predictmg 

for some time a dire end to our morning performances, has at last 

evinced enough curiosity to drag himself out of bed and come over 

to see. But he has not yet been early enough to catch us. 

The days are lengthening rapidly. It is now after six o'clock in 
the evening and our lamp's not lighted ! 

Last time in Seward Olson bought a lot of odds and ends of 
molding for picture frames. And now, with my help, all the little 
things that we have given him are gorgeously framed. On the little 
picture of himself that I painted he has what he calls a "comofiag" 

200 



TWILIGHT 

frame ; it's made of different moldings on the four sides. Well, Olson 
is mighty proud of his pictures. He's really very fond of us. People 
in Seward say he talks of us continually. And there it is thought 
quite remarkable how I have managed with the " crazy " old man. 
I guess the craziness explains it. I picture with horror having as a 
constant companion here one of the fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest, 
wholesome-to-sterility Americans that our country likes to be so 
proud of. 

I told Olson of Kathleen's amusement over the brusque ending of 
his letter, " Answer this if you feel like it — and if you don't it's all the 
same to me. " 

"Well," he said, "that's the way it is here in Alaska; if anyone 
don't like the way a man does he can go to Hell!" 

I've heard an amusing story about Olson and his goats at a little 
Seward exposition at which they were shown. They put his two goats 
into narrow packing boxes that their dirt might not fall onto the floor 
of the building. Olson arrived and seeing the plight of his pets flew 
into a rage. He lifted them out, hurled the packing boxes out of the 
door into the street, and denounced the fair-committee for their 
abuse of animals. And although the whole place tumbled about the 
old man's ears, he won, and saw his goats given an honorable amount 
of freedom in a special enclosure — curtained ofif, "admission to see 
the goats ten cents," — which notice Olson promptly disregarded, 
letting everyone in — and a big crowd at that — free. 

Monday, March third. 

Inauguration day passed here without event. In this ideal com- 
munity of Fox Island we're so little concerned with law — the only law 
that bears on us at all we delight in breaking — that one wonders how 
far no government can be carried. One goes back to first principles 
in such speculation, endows man again with inaUenable rights or at 

201 



WILDERNESS 

least inalienable desires, and then has simply to wonder how much 
of the love of order there is in the natural man. The fact that a large 
proportion of mankind can live and die without any definite knowledge 
of the laws of the community and without ever running counter to the 
forces of law is sign enough that most of the law code is but a writing 
down of what the average man naturally wants to do or keep from 
doing. There's a sharp difference between such "common" law 
and the exceptional law that strikes at the personal liberty of a man, 
laws concerning morals, temperance, or that conscript unwilling men 
for war. In all law there is tyranny, in these laws tyranny shows its 
hand. The man who wants true freedom must escape from the whole 
thing. If only such souls could gravitate to a common center and 
build the new community with inherent law and order as its sole 
guide ! — well, we have returned to the problem. A state that was 
truly interested in progress would dedicate a portion of its territory 
to such an experiment. But no state is interested in anything but the 
gain of one class, which means the oppression of the rest. How farci- 
cal sound these days ** Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." 
"No government without the consent of the governed," and other 
old-fashioned principles. But they have still to be reckoned with till 
the last Bolshevik has been converted into a prosperous tradesman 
and the last idealist is dead. And now for Fox Island. 

The weather is dull and gray — only last evening an hour before 
sundown the clouds suddenly vanished out of the heavens and the 
sun shone as warm and beautiful as on the fairest summer day. Then 
I sat out-of-doors and painted while the snow and ice melted and 
dripped all about. The mornings are cold, doubly cold it seems when 
in the half-light of dawn and perhaps a driving snow squall we nm 
naked down the long stretch of beach and plunge into the bay. I work 
ceaselessly. Time flies like mad and the day of our departure is 
close. 

202 




THE VISION 



TWILIGHT 

Tuesday, March fourth. 

A day of snow and rain spent by us indoors, Rockwell hard at 
work upon his chart of '* Trobbeabl Island " — a wonderful imaginary 
land where his own strange species of wild animals live — and I wash- 
ing and mending. My seaman's bag, damaged on its way here in the 
hold of the steamer, is now quite professionally patched, and the 
knee of my blue overalls shines with a square patch of white canvas. 

Olson was welcome and spent much of the day with us. He has 
reread Kathleen's letter to him and is charmed with it. He feels 
authorized by it to keep me here longer and surely does his best to 
persuade me. He treasures the picture little Kathleen sent him. All 
these things, the letters and little trifles that we have given him will 
be stored away in his too empty box of treasures among a very few old 
letters and a photograph or two of pioneer ladies and gentlemen in the 
dress-up costumes of thirty years ago. These scant treasures, what a 
memorial of a very lonely life ! He showed me to-day a photograph of 
Tom Crane, an old associate of his in Idaho, and two large, splendid 
looking women. Crane's wife and his wife's sister. The wife was 
frozen to death in the snow while on a short journey with her husband. 
He lost both feet. Olson led the rescue party bringing in with great 
difficulty the dead woman and then tending Crane through long, pain- 
ful days until his crippled recovery. 

Thursday, March sixth. 

It's mighty hard work, this painting under pressure. I'm too tired 
to attempt more than the briefest record on this page of two days' 
doings. Yesterday it was gray. At sundown it cleared giving us the 
most splendid and beautiful sunset, the sun sinking behind the purple, 
snowy moimtains and throwing its rays upward into a seething red- 
hot mass of clouds. I painted most of the afternoon out-of-doors. 

To-day we bathed at sunrise, brisk and cold and clear. The 

205 



WILDERNESS 

morning tide was so exceedingly low that I ran dry shod clear around 
the north side of the cove until the whole upper bay was visible. 
Olson had not known it could be done. Returning we put Olson's 
boat into the water and Rockwell and I embarked with my painting 
outfit. I landed on the point I had just visited afoot. Rockwell in 
jumping ashore with the painter timed it badly, slipped, and fell full 
length into the surf of the ground swell, the dory almost riding over 
him. I roared with laughter — to his great fury. He rowed about in 
the harbor for almost two hours returning to bring me home. In the 
afternoon we repeated our excursion — all but the water sports — going 
this time to the south side of the cove. Rockwell's a good little oars- 
man and above all to be trusted to do as he's told to — a vice in 
grown-ups, a virtue in children. 

Friday, March seventh. 

That to-day began in snow and cloud matters not, — it ended in a 
glory. Olson, Rockwell, and I sat that late afternoon far out on the 
bay basking in the warmth of a summer sun, rocked gently on a blue 
summer sea. For hours we had explored the island's western shore, 
skirtmg its tumbled reefs, riding through perilous straits right up to 
where the eddying water seethed at some jagged chasm's mouth. 
That's fine adventuring 1 flirting with danger, safe enough but close — 
so close to death. We landed on the beach of Sunny Cove, found in 
the dark thicket the moldering ruins of an old feed house of the foxes, 
gruesome with the staring bones of devoured carcasses. And then 
we younger ones dashed up the sheer, snow-covered eastward ridge 
—dashed on all fours digging our feet into the snow, clinging with 
hands as to a ladder. There at the top two or three hundred feet 
above the bay we overlooked the farthest seaward mountains of Cape 
Resurrection, then Barwell Island and the open sea. 

Ah, to see again that far horizon ! Wander where you will over all 

206 




THE IMPERISHABLE 



TWILIGHT 

the world, from every valley seeing forever new hills calling you to 
climb them, from every mountain top farther peaks enticing you. 
Always the distant land looks fairest, tiU you are made at last a rest- 
less wanderer never reaching home — aever — until you stand one 
day on the last peak on the border of the interminable sea, stopped 
by the finality of that. 

From our feet the cliff dropped in a V-shaped divide straight down 
to the green ocean; and at its base the ground swell curled, broke 
white and eddied. The jagged mountains across shone white against 
black clouds, — what peaks! huge and sharp like the teeth of the 
Fenris-Wolf. 

We hurried back to Olson who waited in the boat. That side — 
the cove and the more familiar mountains to the westward — lay half 
shrouded in fast dissolving mist. The descent was real sport. We 
just sat down and slid clear to the bottom, going at toboggan pace. 
Poor Olson, who watched us from below, was aghast. On the shore 
I foimd a long, thick bamboo pole, doubtless carried directly here from 
the orient by the Japanese current. We longed to go across to Bear 
Glacier that we could now see, a broad, incUned plane, spotless white, 
with the tallest mountains rising steeply from its borders. But it was 
too late and we returned home. The wonders of this coiintry, of this 
one bay in fact, it would take years to know! 

Monday, March tenth. 
On the eighth it snowed hard all day and both of us worked at our 
trade indoors. The ninth dawned fresh and clear and cold. It was too 
windy to go out onto the bay as we had intended, so, not to be entirely 
cheated out of an excursion, we packed a bag of various supplies and 
set off for the ridge to the eastward. 

It was glorious in the woods. New fallen snow lay upon the tree 
branches; the stm touched only the tallest tops, the wind rustled 
- 2og 



WILDERNESS 

them now and then and made it snow again below. We came out 
upon the summit of the ridge more to the north than we had ever been 
before and from there beheld again the open sea. Nothing can be 
more wonderful than to emerge from the dense forest onto such a 
view 1 Right on the ridge we built a fire beneath the arched roots of 
a large tree. Rockwell will long remember that wonderful chimney 
beneath the roots. I painted on one of the canvases I had brought 
while Rockwell played about or cut wood for the fire. Presently 
the can of beans that we'd laid in the ashes went pop ! — and we knew 
that dinner was ready. So we sat down and ate the good beans, bread 
and peanut butter, and chocolate, — while our backs sizzled and our 
bellies froze. But we loved it and Rockwell proposed that we spend 
three or four days there like that. Then after more painting and some 
play in the snow we came home again. 

But the beautiful days must be busy ones for me. I painted out on 
the lake for an hour or more ; after that again — this time the glorious 
sunset. After supper bread to bake and then, tired out, early to 
sleep in our great, hard, comfortable bed. Olson would have started 
to-day had the weather been moderate. But it has blown fiercely 
from the north — and still it blows. All day I worked packing and now 
my boxes are made and nearly filled. It is surely true that we are 
going ! All day it has seemed to me to be fall. We had thought of 
that before during these recent days. We scent it and feel it. I 
believe that it's the end of a real summer in our lives that we taste 
the sadness of. 

Tuesday, March eleventh. 

It blows incessantly, cold and clear, — blue days. I have painted 
most of to-day, first indoors, and then outdoors commencing a large 
picture. Olson has been with us much of the time. He treasures 
every little memento we can give him. In his pocket-book are snap- 

210 




THE STAR-LIGHTER 



TWILIGHT 

shots of Kathleen, Clara, and Barbara. He wanted Barbara's curl 
that I have— but I couldn't give hun that. It looks as if we should all 
go to Seward together. This wind is likely to hold until the full moon 
passes — and that's still some days off. My trunk is about packed and 
what remains can be done in a very few hours. 

Speaking to Olson to-night about the possibility of a shipwrecked 
man being able to support life on this coast for any length of time he 
told of a native boy of Unga, "crazy Simyon," who lived four years 
at Nigger Head, a wild part of Unga Island, with no shelter but a hole 
in a sand bank, no fire, no weapons or clothes, or tools ; a first-hand 
story, long, wild, terrible, beginning with a boy's theft of sacrificial 
wine, and ending in madness and murder. 

Thursday, March thirteenth. 

Last night was bitterly cold. I had to get up repeatedly to attend 
to the fire. The wind howled and the vapor flew and Rockwell and I 
hugged close together beneath the blankets. Day dawned still icy 
cold. By noon it began to snow and the afternoon was calm and mild. 
And now again the wind blows fiercely from the northeast and we're 
freezing cold ! The day was spent in packing. The dismantled cabin 
looks forlorn. 

Sunday, March sixteenth. 

With the full moon has come the most perfect calm. If it holds 
through to-morrow we shall leave the island. The past three days 
have been busy ones. Bitterly cold weather has prevailed with the 
wind unceasingly from the north — almost the coldest days of the 
winter. Still I did some painting out-of-doors every day until yester- 
day, trying hard to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite 
splendors of this place. Meanwhile our packing was carried on. We 
have made a thoroughly good job of it — I hope ! But who can tell 

213 



WILDERNESS 

what strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates 
and bundles? But for a promise we had made Olson to go with him 




DEAKfST noiTHEK 

X \jCtJMyd-^(MJ^ UXZ^ -uj~-(iu&^ yT)JJtX<^ ZtAjt^ 

c.tvTZ-' ^oyn oo^tlA^rb ^^^ ^--iri^o^. 




MARCH 1 t^^ 

TBS «L1.«T DAT. NO TUNC r. 

BAD ^9^<fe @<22i'T '^IS 



TAT E 

C?RE/Vr<?. I L I |C& ?(? <ffAR /v|RdLSPK*« 

to Sunny Bay and Humpback Creek — on the eastern mainland — we'd 
have gone this day to Seward. 

By noon the most perfect calm had settled upon the water. The 
sky was cloudless, and although really it was still very cold the bright 

214 



TWILIGHT 

sun looked like warmth — and that helped a lot. So Olson's little 
engine, sputtering, stammering, stopping a great deal, carried us upon 
our trip. At Humpback Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high, 
perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round 
basin. The falls to-day were frozen and spread wide over the face of 
the cliff ; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form. 
We had to hurry from here or be stranded by the rapidly retreating 
tide. Next we went to a spot on the bay where Rockwell and I might 
have lived had we not met Olson that fair Simday in August. A little 
cabin stood there — open to the weather through doorway and window 
but otherwise snug and comfortable. Still, even with that great 
wonder, the fall, so near, that spot was not to be compared with our 
own Fox Island home. Next we went to Sunny Bay to visit the old 
trapper who has been wintering there — the same who stopped last 
fall at our island while on his way to camp. The old fellow came to 
meet us as we landed, a feeble, emaciated figure. He has been sick 
all winter and has done practically no trapping. What a forlorn latter 
end for a man ! He drags himself about each day, cuts wood, lugs 
water, cooks, and when he stoops dizziness overcomes him. He sets 
a small circle of traps and drags himself around to tend them. His 
whole winter's work is twelve ermine and two mink — thirty or forty 
dollars' worth at the most. We offered to bring the old man back with 
us and from here on to Seward — but he preferred to stay there a few 
days longer. 

And now I sit here with our packed household goods about 
me, empty walls and a dismantled home. Still we hardly realize 
that this beautiful adventure of ours has come to an end. The 
enchantment of it has been complete; it has possessed us to the 
very last. How long such happiness could hold, such quiet life 
continue to fill up the full measure of human desires only a long 
experience could teach. The still, deep cup of the wilderness is 

215 



WILDERNESS 

potent with wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved a 
lifetime forward to a finer youth. 

Tuesday, March eighteenth. 

Fox Island is behind us. Last August Olson picked us up as 
strangers and towed us to his island; yesterday, after nearly seven 
months there with him we climbed again into our dories and crossed 
the bay — and now we extend the helping hand to the old man and 
tow him and his faltering engine back to Seward. The day dawned 
cold and windy. We proceeded however at once to the completion 
of our packing and the loading of the boat. 

A little after noon the wind moderating slightly we persuaded 
Olson to come with us. My engine working beautifully carried both 
boats along till the other little motor could be prevailed upon to start. 
In the bay the wind was fresh and the chop high. Half-way across the 
wind had risen and the water flew. Olson's engine worked so poorly 
that most of the time I had the full strain of his dory on the line. I 
feared the old man's courage would give out as the sea increased, and 
I grinned at him reassuringly from time to time. Finally, however, as 
the white-crested waves seemed to rush ever more fiercely upon us 
his face grew solemn. He waved to us to turn and run back to the 
island. But the tow line was fast in my boat and I neither chose to 
turn nor loosen it. Showing our backs to him we ran for the shelter 
of Caine's Head — and made it. From there onward we skirted the 
cliffs and found it smooth enough. The wind again died out and 
we entered Seward over a glassy sea. 

And now at last it is over. Fox Island will soon become in our 
memories like a dream or vision, a remote experience too wonderful, 
for the full liberty we knew there and the deep peace, to be remem- 
bered or believed in as a real experience in life. It was for us Ufe as 

216 



TWILIGHT 

it should be, serene and wholesome ; love — but no hate, faith without 
disillusionment, the absolute for the toiling hands of man and 
for his soaring spirit. Olson of the deep experience, strong, brave, 
generous and gentle like a child; and his island — like Paradise. 
Ah God, — and now the world again ! 




\ 



217 






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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




